I Cried Tonight
The last time I cried was three summers ago.
Lying in the one hundred square foot dormitory room I was temporarily residing in, I melted into a fit of existential hysteria amidst a pile of torn up sheets of cheap drawing paper and (very) dirty laundry.
The details of the cause and outcome of said episode are of little to no consequence. All that matters is that it took place, and it occurred roughly two years and seven months before today’s date.
In that timespan, much has changed:
I moved (coincidentally, to the city in which that dormitory room from above was located).
I grew (approximately four inches in height and ten pounds in weight, as well as an obviously innumerable amount in psychological maturity).
I read (and subsequently began to write).
That brings me to the present.
I (nearly) cried tonight.
Somewhere around the fifth or sixth stop after boarding the 7:44 Green Line heading northbound from Erie, I felt the strangely familiar burn of saline pooling in the corners of both eyes.
I didn’t let the build-up get further than that, but in hindsight I can’t help but wonder if that was a mistake.
Were I to actually let loose, I would have at least gained that beautiful calm that follows any form of outward and cathartic release.
And I also might have figured out what the fuck I was about to cry about.
Now, neuroscience is a field I typically leave for experts to discuss, my only knowledge on the matter stemming from cursory browsing of scientific journals.
But I think I’ve got this figured out.
See, by allowing (a poor choice of word here, given the sudden and involuntary manner in which this problem entered my plane of existence, but bear with me) the tears to well up in the external area of my lacrimal puncti, my brain clearly stated that some sort of strong emotion had sent it into turmoil.
However, I resisted the urge to weep (whether consciously or not, I do not know), and thus set my brain upon an entirely different route. The tears were no longer necessary, and the brain did not need an explanation as to why it could stop working.
[If my personality is truly dictated solely by the firing of synapses in the brain, then I would assume my brain is as willing as I to take any excuse to get out of working.]
However, if it was no longer sending these signals to the lacrimal ducts, it no longer needed to retain its reasoning for doing so in the first place.
And so I was left in the dark.
I had been on the verge of tears and hadn’t the faintest idea why.
Of course, I have my suspicions, but private investigation is a field I typically leave for experts to discuss, my only knowledge on the matter stemming from the SparkNotes guide to The Hound of the Baskervilles and a few too many viewings of The Great Mouse Detective as a child.
So, rather than leave this whodunit unsolved, let’s attribute it to a scapegoat to provide myself with a false sense of closure:
The tears were likely a side effect of sleep deprivation.
Yes. That will do fine.
UPDATE: I cried tonight. Dammit.
