It's Not You, It's Me

Today's PSA: It's Not You, It's Me

I cry a lot. I just do. I think it can be likened to the way that infants cry. They just do. Something about clearing toxins from the body. And it's an effective, if not always efficient or eloquent, way to communicate that something is wrong.

For me, I cry because I have a dark stone on my chest. I think that makes it hard to breathe and maybe I need to make the extra effort. Besides, it hurts.

And that's me. You ... well ... you don't make me cry. Even when you ask me how I am and then listen when I tell you. Or when you tell me a little story about Aida. Or tell me that you miss her too. You don't make me cry even when you cry. Honestly, I'm crying anyway. Sometimes with no warning and in the middle of an activity that has every appearance of being enjoyable.

It just happens. A word will float by. A flash of her face, her smile. A scent on the wind. I'll hear a sound ... birds or laughter or the foghorn blaatting in the dark of late hours from the harbor. I'll just remember that she is not where she is supposed to be.

And I cry. It just happens. And it's okay. It's so much better than not crying, to tell you the truth. Every tear, as my poet friend Diane wrote, does its part to dissolve the stone.

So the point is, please let me cry. Help me to make a space for it. It's okay. You can talk about it. It helps. You don't have to ignore it or feel badly as if somehow you created the sadness. You didn't. It's there anyway.

It's me.