love letter #4
on being a crybaby & the sanctity of tears
1. i’ve always been a crybaby
I am, and always have been, a crybaby. A weeper. Most of the feelings I have manifest as big, wet tears all over my face. I’ve never been very good at holding them back, so once they start they’re just sort of on, getting all over the place like I’ve broken the faucet. I’ve cried in all the places you can think of; the dinner table and the shower and the elevator, of course. But also libraries, cafes, airports, restaurants, offices of most kinds, every form of transportation, parties, and a few walk-in fridges. I don’t much mind this inclination—it’s always been a genuine part of me, so I’ve come to terms with it. I’m so used to it by now that I don’t really even get embarrassed anymore, no matter how unplanned the locale. However, it does have the potential to make things weird for the people around me who didn’t sign up for sudden, intense displays of emotion: acquaintances, coworkers, strangers on the sidewalk. This social alienation has sometimes had the effect of making it all feel like performance art. I drag my audience, willing or unwilling, into the experience of my great big feelings.
There are a few things I’ve learned in my lifetime career as an enthusiastic weeper: chiefly, that people have varied and telling reactions to someone else’s tears. A lot of folks tense up, but even more will look away, because they’re unsure what to do or they’re giving you a moment to compose yourself (there is a certain threshold, though, which I actually reach quite often, at which a person can no longer politely ignore the fact that you’re crying). Still some others—and these are often the best people—will simply cry with you.
The second thing I’ve learned is that there is no perfect response to someone bursting (or sinking, or sliding, or tripping) into tears in front of you. It’s a beautifully awkward experience that one is never truly prepared for. A good rule of thumb is to offer the crier a tissue, and then perhaps, later, a piece of fruit (crying is much less bitter with a wedge of clementine in your mouth). You can trust me on this; I’m an expert in my field. At a certain point in my life, openly crying became so much my “brand” that I simply had to embrace it. I regaled party guests with tales of my teary-eyed exploits. I started selling annual tour t-shirts outlining all the public places in which I’d wept. The act was transformed into a badge of honour; friends would send me selfies wearing my tees in funny places, or text me with pride about the novel locales in which they’d recently shed tears. It was A Thing.
It’s never really stopped being a thing. Last year, my dear friends who run Black Forest Pastry Shop (your new favourite bakery, in case you didn’t know) surprised me with this cake for my birthday—a loving nod both to my ubiquitous tears and my propensity for making cake-themed art:
Last year, in 2022, I actually cried shockingly few times. The biggest one I remember was in Gros Morne National Park when I lost a really nice kerchief… So it was a landmark year for me. I cried so little in 2022 that I thought, maybe I’ve turned a corner. Maybe I’m not the Girl Who Cries anymore. This was in fact false, or if I did turn a corner it was actually more of a cul-de-sac situation, and I wound up back on track (Crybaby Avenue perhaps? Crybaby Way?? No?) in 2023.
Months into my current job, I was proud that I hadn’t yet shed any tears on the premises—a sign, surely, that I was regulating my emotions more maturely. Then, in April, my coworkers surprised me with a birthday cake and I was so touched that I immediately and violently started sobbing in front of them (Yes, birthdays and cakes do seem to figure heavily into my stories about crying so far—I haven’t really unpacked that yet).
Speaking of Work Cries, I’ve recently been getting into crying on my walk to work. Nothing major; just a very quick release of tears to feel a little human on the morning commute (sunglasses are great for this purpose if you’re a beginner; at this point I’ve pretty much graduated from needing them). The third thing I’ve learned from a lifetime of tears is that they’re great for making you feel human again.
So, I’m back to crying on the street. Maybe it’s some sort of destiny: I’m a crybaby, and I always will be. I’ve often thought about (for legal reasons [my mom] the following is a joke) getting my knuckles tattooed with CRY/BABY. Because as much as crying can be soft and tender, I also think the proclivity makes me a little bit of a tough bitch. Can you name one thing more metal than showing your most vulnerable, authentic emotions so fearlessly on your face?
But Emmali, the astute reader might observe, if, as you’ve said, bursting into tears sometimes feels like a performance to you, can it ever really be authentic emotion?
And to that I say: crying is so much more than mere expression or performance. Crying is a ritual.
2. to cry is to make sacred your wounds
There was a moment in my life that cemented my core belief about crying. At ten years old, I had established myself as the class crybaby-in-residence. My green young heart was easily wounded; playground events would often reduce me to tears (I have a clear memory of someone muttering ‘what’s she crying about this time?’ during a classroom weep sesh). But enlightenment came to me in the form of a fellow ten-year-old girl named Sydney.
I had been crying to her about something, maybe crying about how I couldn’t stop crying; how I cried so easily at the slightest provocations. And she said, ‘Emmali, don’t be ashamed to cry. You’re crying because you’re capable of very deep emotions. You should be proud that you can feel so strongly.’
Is this verbatim? Probably not; it’s a speech that’s been echoing around in my skull for 18 years. But the meaning was the very same, and it resonated with me as nothing else had so far. At the time, I’d assumed it was advice she’d heard before from an adult. But perhaps Sydney was, as preadolescent girls are wont to be, the momentary conduit of some greater universal wisdom. No matter its origin, the message hit home; as she spoke, the clouds parted and a harp riff sounded in the distance; this Feelings Evangelism would change my life.
So, I came to understand, to cry is to make sacred your wounds. When I cry, when I give in to crying, I’m honouring the thing happening inside my body, the great and terrible swelling of emotion that must be expressed or putrefy. I’m acknowledging the things happening outside my body that I can’t help but react to. And I’m inviting you to witness the profound reaction I am having. Those who have not yet learned to shed such tears should be humbled to witness the ritual.
3. the divine sisterhood of tearful hearts
Beautiful human, artist and teacher Breanna Rowley was my heart’s collaborator in art school. We found (and continue to find) solace in each other’s status as Girls with Big Feelings. Breanna is a tender art-maker who observes her world carefully and then finds sublime ways to describe it. In school, the two of us commiserated over the state of Things, and our hearts, and the breaking of them, and the general indescribability of one’s early twenties. We loved imagining spaces that could hold all of these feelings, and tools that could help to express them. We built little worlds in which new emotional possibilities could manifest: rooms designed for crying in, and parties to celebrate our sadness.
There’s something to all of this, and it’s always on the tip of my tongue. Something Breanna and I were always prodding at in our work together; something I feel every time I draw a birthday cake. Cake and salt tears and confetti and pink. It’s My Party and I’ll Cry If I Want To. There are so many places we’re not allowed to cry; places in which a smile or at the very least a certain emotional neutrality are expected. And there are social contracts we break when we choose to present otherwise; when we bring the softness of private girl-coded spaces into the public eye; when our feelings are suddenly everyone else’s problem, and why shouldn’t they be, because it’s everyone else who made us feel this way in the first place.
Maybe we’ve built these restrictions around crying because we’re afraid of its power. The truth is that there’s a special, shimmering boundary between the parallel dimensions of Not Crying and Crying. It’s the prickling behind your eyes, the hairs quivering on the back of your neck, the static when the TV flicks on. Crossing over is like a kind of magic spell.
In recent years, as my friends and I have aged into a stage of life in which very big things seem to happen to us all the time, that magical boundary seems to get crossed more and more. I’ve found myself in many conversations that turn into crying on the couch. Crying while holding hands across a table. Crying on our lunch breaks. It sometimes feels like the only thing to do. It sometimes feels like something we’ve grown into: we no longer have to go to clubs we hate to drink vodka about it all. Instead, we can light a candle and roast a chicken over which to weep together.
Is crying together its own kind of collaboration? Is it maybe one of the most divine ways we can commune with one another?
4. sad clown as conduit for radical truths
I’m in my sad clown era….. There, I said it!
I really didn’t get the whole clown thing until recently—but this year my eyes were opened to the truth about clowns, which is that they reflect all of society’s repressed bits back to us. They act as mirrors for the uncomfortable, the awkward and unpleasant, the ugly even—a way to witness the funky feelings without having to step into them yourself. Clowning is a public service.
Sad Clown sheds your tears for you, but Sad Clown also makes you think about all the things those tears are for. Crying is the instant-honesty button; crying cuts the bullshit. It wipes away the mask. Crying, wielded well, disrupts social convention, politic, and nicety. It halts the people-pleasing urge to gloss over, to turn away. Crying is a mirror that confronts you with the truth.
Sometimes, the most unexpected truths are those your own tears reflect back to you; these are the moments when you must be your own sad clown. A few months ago, after a weekend spent with old friends, I got home and decompressed. I reflected on spending two days and nights laughing and feeling warm and known, and I felt that great swelling in my heart; and I cried because I was so happy to be full of love, and happy to know it to be love; and at the same time overwhelmed and frightened by the way my capacity for love has grown—the way it seems, these days, to be ever-expanding. Sometimes it feels like that’s all there is; like all the tears I ever shed are really, in the end, just acts of love. I stood alone in my little kitchen and wept for all the love I feel and had ever felt, and all the even bigger love I know I’m growing to make space for.
I am, and always have been, a crybaby. Crying is divine. Crying is radical. Crying is communal. Crying is great big powerful love. Crying is also just a silly clown in her kitchen at 9pm on a Sunday.
In this next chapter of my life’s calling as crybaby-in-residence wherever I go, I intend to embrace all of these truths. I can’t say for sure what else the sad clown era might have in store for me; I’ve already cried in so many places. But I haven’t cried everywhere yet. The 2024 tour is on its way, and I hope you’ll consider joining me.
👁️💧👄💧👁️ wishing you a tender new year,
Emmali