Crying on the 134

So far I’ve cried on the 134, the 5 and the 101 – twice. And that’s just in the last week. A friend texted me that he didn’t mind crying in public places when it’s in the name of celebrating someone’s life. I think I do mind, but I looked up on Yelp: “good bars to cry in.”

I don’t feel as if these tears are earned though and maybe that’s why I’m embarrassed when the person in the Prius chugging next to me sees me with tears falling from my face. I’m worried they’re thinking, “Come on, man. Do you really deserve to be crying? Did you earn those tears? Because I’m pretty sure it wasn’t your brother who died.” Or if they don’t look, and I’m just sitting there with tears falling into my lap, awestruck and disgusted, that these people have the nerve to talk happily on the phone or casually rap over Drake, or what I assume is Drake, with their windows up and their A/C blasting. What gives them the right to carry on completely unaffected?

So either they’re accusing me of not having the right to feel the way I do or I’m mad at them for not feeling the way I do.

Since my hands are on the wheel, the tears sit until they dry on my face. And for whatever reason, a dried tear doesn’t feel the way I expected it to. I didn’t think it would be any different from jumping out of the shower and not bothering to towel-off. But it’s more like when you get out of the ocean and let the sun do the work for you. The salt water cakes on your face, drying it out, leaving it feeling crunchy and somehow less agile.

I don’t have a lot of experience with tears. On my wedding day, I’m told all my groomsmen were balling, and I’m sure if I had seen my brother and my best friends tearing up, I would have been right there with them. But I was facing my wife and her stone-cold bridesmaids who knew better than to let their mascara bleed before the wedding party pictures.

There have been a handful of other times in the last fifteen years where I can remember crying. Each time someone had died. But more often, someone died and I didn’t cry. It didn’t feel earned. I was sad, but I didn’t feel right crying just because the circumstances were sad. I felt like something had to have been cut from me, specifically taken away from me, in order to justify the tears.

But on the 101, skirting passed Hollywood, I could feel myself on the verge of tears, where I have been for almost a week now, but nothing was cut from me. Something was taken from one of my closest friends, but I still question whether I was in the right to feel like I want to bury my head in the steering wheel and sob like a fucking four-year-old on the shoulder of the freeway.

So if anyone has any answers about when it’s okay to cry, I’d like to know. Really.

I think I perceive sadness as weakness and weakness as a vulnerability to getting hurt. If you’re not weak, you can’t get hurt. If you’re not sad, you can’t be labeled as weak, so in my distorted view of the world, the best way to not get hurt is to not be sad.

The only problem is that I am sad. I’ve been sad for as long as I can remember. And it’s not like something horrible happened to me. I was a sad fucking eight-year-old. This hasn’t changed, it’s not anyone’s fault, but I am aware of it and I think it makes me below average when it comes to grieving or even appropriately dealing with anything emotional.

Your average teenage apathy became my modus operandi. If I don’t care, then it won’t hurt when I fail. I don’t really care ergo I can’t get hurt if I do. So I’m afraid to get hurt, which also makes me afraid to care. This is all probably very obvious for everyone else, but I’m still trying to wrap my head around why I’m crying on the shoulder of the freeway, and why I’m ashamed that I’m crying because I don’t deserve to feel this pain to begin with.

So now not only am I ashamed that I’m crying, but I also think I’m an imposter to this grief. I don’t even deserve to feel as shitty as I do. Why can’t I listen to Drake with my windows up and my A/C blasting? Why can’t I call my brother and complain that I hate my job and I should quit because life is short, etc.?

But I did all that last week. And someone just died which even further solidifies this thing about life being short and that it doesn’t need to be a grind and that Anne Dillard quote that I repeat too often, but wish I had tattooed on my forearm, “How we spend our days, is of course, how we spend our lives.” Why is that so fucking massive to me? It seems so obvious yet every time I read it, it blows my fucking mind. Are you fucking kidding me? This day? This shit? These will be the pieces, which collectively make up my time on this earth? And I’m spending more than five minutes with people who I don’t love doing things I don’t enjoy?

Well, that’s wrong. I mean, if that’s what’s happening and my time is limited, why am I worried about whether a stranger thinks my grieving is earned? Fuck them. Seriously. Fuck them. But they don’t even care. They’re in their own bubbles too… and now it seems I’ve gotten off track. We’re talking about crying.

People say it’s a healthy thing to do. Why do you have to hurt before you can do it? Isn’t there a way to do it without the hurt? Probably not. I guess you do have to earn it.

A police officer is knocking on my window. I guess I need to carry on with what I was doing. Surrounding myself with people who I love, doing what makes me happy. But first, I guess I’ll let myself cry.