Tears: Messengers Of The Unspeakable

"There is a sacredness in tears.  They are not the mark of weakness but of power.  They are messengers of overwhelming grief and unspeakable love."  ~Washington Irving

This is a beautiful quote and I really wanted to share it and sort of really think about it, think about our emotions and our tears.  It's a beautiful way of looking at tears but it's also very true about them.  I would say tears are messengers of three main emotions: grief, happiness, and love.  But tears are also messengers of other emotions such as frustration and anger, feelings that I feel a lot and tears come with them.  But there is something I never thought of in tears and that is that "they are not the mark of weakness but of power."  Before my accident, I hated crying.  I felt weak.  I felt like a child.  It certainly didn't feel strong or powerful to cry.  But since my accident, I am emotionally fragile and breakdown easy and I find myself defending my emotions, defending my tears because I feel like I have a right to them because of what I've been through.  Yet it can be frustrating sometimes that I feel that I have to defend my emotions, defend my tears.  When those kind of strong emotions are taking control of my body and overwhelming me, I want to be embraced and sometimes I am but also sometimes people (friends and family) don't know how to respond to the strength of the emotions I can have and how fast they can come on.  There are a lot of things about my accident and adapting to my reality now that I haven't learned to come to terms with or be at peace with and I don't know how long it will be before I can do either of those things.  But I think it's because of that that my emotions can come on strong and quick and the tears follow quickly and with a great passion.  There are many times where I harbor emotions for awhile until they finally reach their boiling point and I can no longer keep them hidden inside.  And I will just suddenly start crying and the tears that come are like large raindrops in a good thunderstorm.

But there is truth in that piece of the quote by Washington Irving:  Tears can be powerful in so many ways.  Tears from a baby get a parent's attention and the comforting embrace of their arms.  When a child falls down and hurts himself, tears get gentle, loving kisses on their owie that can take away the pain.  They can stop a fight between couples, friends, family members.  Tears in a good cry can make a person feel better, emotionally cleansed.  Tears can take the place of words in unspeakable moments of happiness, unspeakable love, or unspeakable grief.

My emotions have also changed in how they present themselves, if that makes sense.  I can get upset over something completely unrelated to my accident but the emotions that I feel are always rooted in my accident, like the deep, thick, strong and mangled roots of the General Sherman sequoia tree.  I have such anger and frustration regarding my accident that underneath whatever it is that is making me upset that is completely unrelated to my burn, fuels the emotions and the tears.

I have always been an emotional person and I think it had partly to do with being an artist at heart and not having that thick skin.  I also have a tendency to take things personally and react quickly.  I always hated the saying, "Don't take this personally but..." because it may not be personal to you, but it's personal to me.  However, since my accident my emotional personality has altered a bit.  I'm still an emotional person but things are different somehow.  I guess the only way I can describe it is I'm emotionally "fragile."  If something upsets me and I'm around people, I can either suppress it completely until I'm alone or I suppress it as much as I can but the tears find their way out of the tear duct to blanketing my eyes the way they do before they fall over the edge of my lower lid and run down my cheeks and finally fall off my chin.  But in the latter example, the tears fall silently until I get alone and then I'm usually laying in bed in the fetal position with tears that I never knew could be produced so massively and quickly and never ending.