How often do you cry?
I am not a crier. I don’t cry while watching movies or reading sad books. The Kite Runner was a close call. The Disney movie Brave too, but that’s because I was seven, and the mom turning into a bear was sad. I go literal months without crying, as I tend to bottle up my emotions. I started jotting down all the times I cried on my Notes app to prove a point that I really don’t cry that often. However, once that bottle breaks, the tearworks come out, and they come out hard.
I started my notes at the start of 2023. Here are all the times I cried:
March 7, 2023: On this fine sunny Tuesday, I cried for the first time that year. I wasn’t sad, but I sprained my ankle hard while playing soccer. I remember the feeling of that ankle rolling to a 90 degree angle, before I hit the ground. I curled up on the ground and started crying.
June 29, 2023: I was so excited to go to the beach. The front entrance of our resort rooms had a couple of stairs. Those stairs weren’t even, and I would test that out by spraining my ankle— the other ankle this time— and falling to the ground. Immediate pain shot up, and crying followed. I didn’t get to go to the beach.
Sad movies don’t make me cry, but my ankles sure do.
August 13, 2023: I didn’t cry cry. But tears surely did swell up, as I said goodbye to my parents before my exchange year. I held in my tears, as my dad jokingly said “Why are you crying? All you’ll be doing is skipping school and traveling.”
August 30, 2023: Homesickness sucks.
November 16, 2023: Still in a bout of homesickness, I knew my birthday would be a hard day. I cried when I heard my parents’ voice message. That would be the last time I cried in 2023.
Surely I cried some time between 2023 and May 2024, however, documentation had been lost.
May 2, 2024 - May 6, 2024: I didn’t intentionally cry, but it sure looked like I was. My almost blinding eye infection on a trip in Italy led me to have constant tears dripping down my face. The painful eye drops didn’t help either. I guess I was blinded by Italy’s beauty.
June 30, 2024: That day was the last day I would see my exchange friends again. They had gone through the same homesickness and crying that I had, and now we would be returning to our separate corners of the world.
July 5, 2024: I threw a small going-away party with my friends. Safe to say, we all sob tears, and my friends refused to leave. Eventually, after they left, I cried while eating watermelon on the kitchen floor, as I reflected on my year abroad.
July 7, 2024: My host family and extended family all came over to say goodbye. Lots of tears.
July 8, 2024: My last day on my exchange. I cried so much at the airport, they didn’t even care that my luggage was way overweight.
From August to mid-December, I didn’t shed a single tear. There was simply nothing to cry about nor did I have time to cry.
December 19, 2024: I got rejected to my dream school. I literally went through the stages of grief.
March 26-28, 2024 plus random undocumented nights: Too many college decisions. Rejection is redirection to crying.
In the past three years, I have cried a whopping total of around 20 times, give or take. That’s an average of six cries per year, and somehow most of which comes from my terrible ankles— or even more terrible college decisions. Don’t get me wrong, when I cry, I cry hard. It’s like I hold everything in a dam, until I can’t take it anymore and burst. So I wonder when the next time I’ll cry, and when the damn dam will burst again.
I like the unique style of the essay (if you can even call it an essay). I like how you let the journal entries mostly speak for themselves. It makes it seem more personal and it helps you get through more stories in less time. The rapidness that the stories come by is also very good. It makes it so I get to know the author well. It also helps that some of the entries are related. I like how the rolling of the ankles are first, making us come slowly into the topic.
ReplyDeleteAs for a title you could make a play on the Journal entries somehow and title your essay: "May 2nd 2025, When I cry" or something like that.
I really like the formatting of your essay, and I think it really allows more flexibility that adds to your work. I really like your first paragraph, and your early jumping off point because it feels like an appropriately faster pace to go along with your structure. My big note would be that the journal entries might draw on a bit, leaving less room for the reflection at the bottom. The last paragraph summarizes and acts as a good conclusion, but I think some further analysis could add more nuance or personal-ness to your paper. Have you always cried sparingly? Is it subconscious/natural for you or do you see some kind of negative affiliation in crying (like you think it makes you weak or wastes time for example)? Does it affect you that you don't cry often? And what are your other ways to release bad emotions when you don't cry? I think expanding the “why” behind it will really make the essay feel more rounded. Overall, that is really my only advice as this essay already feels very solid!
ReplyDeleteI also struggle with titles, but you could do something kind off tongue-in-cheek like "Crying: A Log" since you are kind of keeping a log of the instances you cried. Or something more blunt like "What makes me cry" or something along those lines maybe.
Hi Sarisa,
ReplyDeleteI really liked the thoughtfulness of your response. The journal style makes me feel like I am experiencing the events alongside you, and I liked your commentaries on each of the events. I would be curious to hear more about your thoughts during each of the events, as well as how maybe the crying feeling differs from entry to entry. However, with the constraints of the blog, it would indeed be difficult to fit these aspects in. I would have loved to see more reflection on your perspective on crying on the last paragraph, but overall I thought your blog post was very thoughtful and insightful. Good work!