I’ve been crying a lot recently.
Even though I’ve always been someone who cries quite a bit, it is not that often that I am visited by these enormous waves of mixed emotions that break through and send me to sometimes hour-long trips in which I am gasping for air, bending in rushes of intense pain, swimming through seas of sadness, and occasionally getting pulled by the strong currents of rage, anger and despair. Once I reach the shore, I feel physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted, but relieved – or at least partially relieved (which means there’s another trip in plan for me in a couple of hours or maybe the next day).
I’m against any form of emotional suppression or avoidance. It never resolves anything; it pushes things aside where they grow stronger and uglier just to explode in the worst possible moment or otherwise leak into your day-to-day life in the form of weird habits, addictions, depression, obsessive eating habits, passive-aggressive behavior… you name it. You will have to deal with them now or later, in one form or another, so, in my opinion, it is better to face them head on and have the clean slate for living more joy-filled life later on.
Having said that, the temptation to give in to some numbing or distracting tool when you are dealing with such strong avalanches of emotion several times a day, is high and real. It can be really tiring.
What’s even more tiring, other than feeling all those painful emotions bumping into the walls of my physical vessel while trying to find their way out, is the mental process that kicks in every time I embark on my tearful release journeys.
What the fuck is this?
What’s wrong with me?
Why I feel like this?
Is it because of _____ or ______?
How can I stop this?
I am psycho, I am hopeless, I am so deeply fucked up, will I EVER be stable?
I am so ashamed of myself blah blah blah…
It goes on and on, making the pain escalate even more and making me go purely hysterical, half pitying half hating myself until I become aware of that voice and start separating myself from it and tell it to shut the fuck up, it is already hard enough. It is a damn tough job to stay mentally strong in order to distinguish the mind’s voice from your true essence when you are in the midst of an intense emotional turmoil – so props to everyone who manages to do it. I admire you.
I imagine that stupid voice’s speech doesn’t differ a lot from one person to another (at least from what I’ve heard) and I am 100 percent sure there’s always the phrase, that obvious and logical and practical, but oh-so-fucking irritating, phrase that I, myself, am guilty of pulling out nine times out of 10 when I see someone crying and the phrase is (you guessed it)
Why are you crying?
Why are you crying? It is a normal, logical question in a world when situation A necessary leads to emotion B, in every person, no matter their age, personality, character traits, sensitivity, accumulated emotional trauma, hormonal imbalances, past life experiences etc. etc.
Well, let me tell you something. We don’t live in that world. We would like to, because it would be easier for us to grasp and hold onto something stable in order to understand what is going on around and inside of us, but we don’t.
I don’t think we can ever truly understand why a person is having an emotional release in form of crying (or any other) nor that there is a “reason” in the way we like to think there is. It is probable that even the person going through it doesn’t really understand it but forces themselves to go over with a fine-tooth comb through everything that preceded the explosion, looking for that trigger that was responsible for the meltdown, but… that trigger is just that – a trigger.
The accumulated emotional charge was there from before and once it was too much to be held inside – it had to be let out and cleansed. It is actually useless to try to detect the “cause”, because there are so many and at the end of the day… does it really serve you to understand it? Will it help you prevent more suffering in the future? How can you be sure of that? How can you even be sure that you traced down every single ingredient of your emotional vomit? There’s no way to be certain of that.
And I believe there’s no purpose in doing that.
I am telling you that, because I tried. I tried so many times to understand, to dissect, to judge myself, to hate myself, looking for the cause, the source, the…the… SOMETHING that is at the root of the pain that emerges periodically and abruptly.
The other day, while I was in midst of it, third time around in the same day, my lungs aching, my lips and eyes red and swollen, grasping for the 15th tissue with my left hand, exhausted as shit and slowly but surely out of strength to deal with it… I saw a word. The word. My word, the word that I need the most and that’s why I tattooed it on my left wrist.
Surrender.
Surrender…surrender…surrender… I started whispering it to myself and noticed the silence spreading through my head, the brain emptying out. There was a moment of peace, the suffering subsided and then I felt a stab of pain coming from my womb… and I allowed it. I surrendered to it. I cried and let it come out through my eyes, letting the energy leave the space of my body.
We don’t have to understand it. We don’t have to try to explain it. We don’t need to feel guilt or shame for not having a palpable “reason” for our emotional meltdowns. We just need to let them occur, let them come and go, without placing any label on them. It may seem an impossible task to do, but it makes the whole thing immensely, but IMMENSELY easier.
Because once the storm is over, you take a deep breath, you feel a new space that has been liberated and you go on with your life, enjoying more serene days, instead of over-chewing and asking why of the storm over and over again. It doesn’t matter.
Stop asking why. Stop trying to understand it. Stop resisting it, fighting it. Stop trying to make it stop and give in to it.
Surrender to it.
And thank it for cleansing you and taking away those dead parts of you that you no longer need.
Maja Kezic is a 24 year old writer, Reiki healer and artist currently living in Portugal. She shares her experiences and lessons she comes across on her path on the blog www.chasingthebliss.com, in hope to aid and support those facing similar struggles.
Image courtesy of Dmitry Schemelev.
