What can I say?

Sometimes you’re Alice in Wonderland, shrinking and crying tears so large they sweep you out to sea to be drowned.

Sometimes the sobbing becomes coughing becomes hacking becomes wretching. Like the wild animal of emotion inside your belly wants to vomit itself up. And you lean over the bathroom sink and you wait, but it doesn’t come. You splash water on your face and return to your room.

Sometimes you wail and bawl and scream into a pillow and then fling the pillow across the room. And then another pillow and another and another. Until there are no more pillows. There’s just you and the mattress and the mattress is too big to throw. And so are you.

What can I say?

I hate to admit it, that these are days of crying. These are days of reckless tears. These are days to study salt water in all its subtleties pouring out of my body.

There are the silent, still tears. The face composed. The body still. The mind calm and quiet, water running in invisible but constant lines down the face. The kind of water that in its trickling can carve canyons out of mountains.

There is the sudden moment, walking down the street or riding the bus or in casual conversation with a friend, where something strikes you beautiful or something makes you gasp in pain and water leaps to the corners of the eyes, hanging there on the precipice like a diver suddenly afraid to jump.

There is the shuddery trembling of the chest, the water spilling out of eyes that are darting this way and that way, vulnerable and ashamed, the hand flying to the face again and again to wipe them away, the mouth babbling to the witness, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’ Sorry to be seen like this. Terrified to be revealed.

There is the screaming, bawling, wake the neighbors crying. The tears that wreck the body as they clamor their way out into the open air, tears that turn you into a terrified child wailing in the middle of the night. There is no solace, there is no help for you, there is no one who understands. You are all alone in the world. You are crazy, everything is crazy. These tears tell you that you hate people that you know that you love. These tears tell you to bang your head against the wall, to punch the doorframe, to kick the stove in, to cut your wrists, because what’s it all for, because why not, because maybe now’s the time.

Sometimes tears lie to you. Do not always listen to what they say. Tears will tell you anything. When they’re in that kind of mood.

I’m happy to say that I survive it better than I used to. The wild bout of over the deep end wailing. Even in that intensity, even when I turn into a preverbal creature that does not know what it needs, but only that it needs, and that the need is not being met. Even then, I still somehow know some things. These things prove that I am learning. I am proud of this.

I know that when I start wanting to fling things about, to only throw soft things. And to only throw them in such a way that they will land harmlessly against nothing breakable. I know not to throw anything at anybody ever. I know that when I start wanting to bang my head against hard things, I need to breathe. I know that when I start wanting to punch something solid, I need to cradle my fists tenderly against my belly. I know that when I start wanting to cut my wrists, I need to take myself by the shoulders and calm the fuck down.

I know that it is a very bad and very dangerous idea for someone else to tell me to calm down when I am crying.

But if you come to me, when I am in a frenzy and wrap your arms strong and solid around me, preferably from behind, I might spend myself and slowly choke through the wailing into quieter sobbing, silent shaking, it might de-escalate into weeping and I might again be a soft thing in your arms. I do not know this for certain. But I imagine it is so.

After the crying, whether alone or spent on somebody’s knee, I am likely to be clear, like the beach at night after a storm. Clearer than I was before the sobbing clattered through me and I screamed my demons out. Clear.

I know there are people who experience this. From time to time. I know I am not the only one. With the occasional meltdown. Or the occasional month where a day doesn’t pass without some kind of tears. Sometimes we are that open. Sometimes we are that shaken. Sometimes we are so far over the edge that everything is stimulating, traumatizing, triggering. I comfort myself with the idea that I am not crazy. That the only reason I worry about whether I’m crazy is because I am close to some folks right now that process their experiences in very different ways. That don’t go straight to emotion with everything. Everyone has their way. This is one of mine. I’m okay with that.

But two days later, I am still reeling with the chemical backlash of it all. Like an intense emotional hangover or a bad recovery from a powerful trip. My chemicals are out of balance and nothing feels solid. I am shaken and I do not know which way is up.

I trust that this will pass.

But the worst is the knowledge that I was witnessed. (Or heard, I should say. I went into nightmareland in the visual privacy of my own room.) Someone was in the house at the height of my intensity, someone who is involved intimately, someone whose opinion of me I value, someone whose fear was stimulated by my reaction, someone whose love I cherish. Even as I have felt easy with myself about what happened, I have concern about the ramifications.

What can I say?

I want to tell you the truth, and what I have told you is true.

But I want to tell you that my life is full and rich and joyous. It is. That there is powerful and magnificent love in my life. There is. That I am well. I am. These things are also true.

I want to be the joyful one for you, and sometimes I am not.

I want to tell you that all the love is easy, and it is not all easy right now.

But love is love, and it is good.

And this, too, is true.