The Joy and the Pain: Learning To Love Crying
By Turi Sioson
Photo by Mariel Wiley
Crying is a funny thing. I cried the first time I traveled out of state without my mom. I broke into a fit of frustrated tears on my eighth attempt at applying a piece of Saniderm to my freshly tattooed arm at 1:30 a.m.; I’ve shed tears over my cat’s hypothetical death as she sat perfectly healthy and relaxed two inches from me. But I’ve also laughed so hard I started crying, doubled over and lost in whatever was so funny. I cried when I realized I had begun to smile in pictures the same way I did as a small child. My most recent rewatch of Kung Fu Panda made me tear up as I giggled, remembering my childhood love for Cee Lo Green and Jack Black’s version of “Kung Fu Fighting” that plays over the end credits.
When I Googled “why do we cry?” a few years ago, I learned from WebMD — in probably my only positive interaction with the website — that tears surface in response to any strong emotion we feel, not just those that are negative. Whether it be anxious, sad, bittersweet or excited emotions, if what we’re feeling is strong enough, we’ll feel the urge to cry. Like everything in this world, crying is multidimensional, and it is through my journey into this realization that I grew to associate the act positively.
However, my relationship with crying has not always been healthy. As a post-toddler-aged kid, I was not as open with my vulnerability as I was as a snot-nosed, parent-clinging tyke. When I held back tears while reading books and watching movies, people noticed — they were surprised and a little impressed by my stoic appearance, particularly because I was a girl, and made it a part of my image among my peers. It got to the point where I began to take pride in not showing that I was affected by goodbyes, happy endings or even physical pain.
When my seventh grade English class became enamored with a slam poem our teacher showed us for National Poetry Month, I held in tears over the video that I would later cry to at home. When I accidentally broke my best friend’s phone junior year, I felt so awful that I must’ve apologized to him over a dozen times, though later insisting over text — through glassy eyes — that I was “totally fine.”
It's not as if my parents shamed me in any way for crying as a child, but it was somewhat rare to see my family express these kinds of emotions openly. Crying was a private, painful thing, and coupled with this non-crier-girl identity that began forming among my peers, I saw openly crying as shameful, a betrayal of this identity and my defiance of gender and an activity that made me feel like an outsider in my family.
The first time I cried again without that shame was when the pandemic hit and everything went into lockdown. I got a call from my favorite manager as I walked to my mailbox — “We can send you information about how to get on unemployment… Tell your dad I said ‘hi.’” — and my vision went blurry before I even hung up the phone; I had to keep my voice from shaking around the lump in my throat that formed. I was taken aback, angry at the world and scared for my job, but I also felt ten times lighter than I had in weeks after the cry I had in response to that phone call.
Left to my own devices throughout the course of the lockdown and decreased in-person time that followed, I had no audience to feed my pride over not showing emotion and a sharp increase in the level at which I felt things. In the midst of such unprecedented change, I had no desire to suppress whatever emotions happened to surface. I wanted to feel something, and crying was often a way to do that in those lockdown days. I cried while reading Little Women for the first time, I teared up watching the news, revisited painful memories and sat with uncertainty, rage, fear and joy.
I learned how to name my emotions and how to call them in: on our daily walks in the neighborhood, a particularly pretty patch of clouds and sun could later bring me to tears thinking about how much I loved and was grateful for the moment. Sobbing on the bathroom floor over my dislike of my bad habits put me in a self-reflective space that I had never been in before.
The things I found beautiful — my coworkers and I laughing together at the end of a shift, the way the light hit my wall in the afternoon, the series finale of my favorite show — and the things I found hurtful — stubbing my toe on a particularly bad day, snapping at my best friend, being ignored by someone I cared about — were given a physical outlet, allowing me to experience things fully. I learned that I felt better after letting myself cry in response to what I was feeling, no matter if that feeling was good or bad, and I slowly came to understand what moved me as a person.
This May, I saw Everything Everywhere All At Once for the first time, sandwiched in between my two best friends in a crowded movie theatre. We were certain the movie would make us cry, had heard from everyone on TikTok that it would, but nothing could've prepared me for the way that collective cry — sobbing, really — would impact me.
At first, I thought I was the only one crying, so I let the tears and snot just roll right down into my mask without doing anything, afraid to give myself away — what if no one else is as affected as I am? But soon after, I could sense a shift in the whole crowd, including my friends who sat beside me: no one moved, no one breathed; everyone was glued to what was happening on the screen. A couple of scenes later, I noticed out of the corner of my eye that one of my friends was wiping her face; the other was sniffling periodically. Soon, it was clear that all of us were crying, physically holding in loud, audible sobs with our whole bodies, chests heaving with the attempt. I remember all three of us letting it out briefly when one scene made us laugh after such a long cry. During the credits, we all looked at each other’s snotty, red faces and grinned.
It was the first time I had so completely shared in the act of crying, and there was an added sense of acceptance from the fact that I was crying so openly with women over a movie that deals closely with young, queer womanhood and mother/daughter relationships. Though I felt emotionally exhausted on the drive home, I felt changed. With two of the women I love most in the world, crying didn't feel shameful or stupid — it felt right and safe, and whatever inhibitions I was still holding onto about being vulnerable fell away.
I don't think I would feel like a real person anymore if I didn't cry as much as I do now. I love being able to connect with things so easily; I love being able to feel something so strongly that it moves me to tears. I feel as though I'm taking care of the emotionally-guarded child still within me when I allow myself to cry. Self-reflection is hard enough as a young person — especially in your early twenties — and the least I can do for myself is be true to what I'm feeling. Crying allows me to be truthful in expressing all of my emotions — I revel in being able to experience them, sit with what’s making me feel them, and then release them, bringing me closer to myself and my surroundings.
When I sob over joyful things, when I cry in between jokes with friends, I am setting myself up to associate something more than dread or pain with this necessary yet for some reason difficult act. When I'm sitting on my bathroom floor with my head in my hands over school; when I'm thinking of my grandma’s passing and all the things we didn't get to talk about; when I'm missing my best friend living an entire ocean away from me, crying doesn't feel so hopeless and lonely — it feels like proof that I care deeply.
I cried several times while writing this essay.