Perhaps I’d made the title seem more melodramatic than it actually is, but there is no other more straightforward way to say it: I actually can’t cry anymore.
Of course, I can still physically eject tears from my tear glands if I assert enough force on them, and that’s what I deliberately did last night to get some frustration and worry out of my system after I thought I’d wronged a friend and became frightened. Even then, the pathetically forced tears didn’t last very long and didn’t help very much, either.
I’M SURE THIS IS RIDICULOUS TO YOU but it’s worrying for me because I used to cry a lot, and there was a period of time when I used to cry everyday. I’m not saying that that’s a healthy way to live, but I knew who I was and how much my melancholic temperament affected me as an emotional individual, and crying was my go-to for almost everything that made me sad/angry/worried/frustrated. It’s not productive, but crying does me a lot of good because somehow, I always feel lighter and more at ease after a good cry. It doesn’t even have to be a long and substantial cry, just one weep during which I let my emotions flush out, and then I feel a whole lot calmer. It’s such a cathartic process.
The whole of today, I’ve been really overwhelmed with emotions. Nothing specific. I can’t even tell if it’s sadness or happiness or anger or whatever but it was just a whole gigantic mess of emotions and it made me restless. There was little I could do to settle down and concentrate at a task enough to distract myself from it. Naturally, I turned to wanting to cry again. But I couldn’t. In fact, I laughed more than anything at the pathetic fact that I couldn’t cry to make myself feel better; it indeed was pretty amusing. So in the end I didn’t know what else to do except write about it so here I am.
The only origin of these emotions that I can think of is going through my folder of stuff that I’d accumulated over the past year here (movie tickets, ice skating tickets, letters, cards, even a fork from A Pie Thing) and feeling the hollow feeling I’d described in my previous post return again. But I wasn’t exactly feeling sad. There was wistfulness, perhaps, and a mighty lot of nostalgia, but the urgency wasn’t at its maximum to feel sad yet, which is also another thing that worried me because I’ve never felt so emotionally detached before. I have only ever felt intensely and thoroughly, and again, while it was a pain in the ass, I knew it was who I was, and I never questioned it (even though I did always complain about it a lot). I realise I’ve been able to deny my feelings a lot lately, which, in retrospect, is probably the biggest reason of my inability to cry. And many might see this as growth, as an expansion of strength, and I think so too, but at the same time it also feels very unnatural and very artificial. It also scares me. There is very little I am not scared of. And it’s horrendously ironic because a few months ago I had to swear an oath to myself to get through the day without crying once and now I’m desperately seeking for catharsis in the form of bawling my eyes out. We always want what we can’t get. It’s a sick, twisted world.
Another frightening thought I had in the shower was: what if I couldn’t cry on the last day(s) as well? I don’t know why it’s scary, just that when I thought of it it made me want to throw up.
Of course, I say all of this now but who knows??? This might just be a temporary emotional block and I’m making a mountain out of a molehill, as always.
Fun fact of the day: I made spaghetti for lunch today and Bellyn said it was worthy of a cafe-standard spaghetti dish and now that’s a compliment I’ve never gotten before! 😀 I didn’t take any photos of the spaghetti, though. Aw. 😦
michelle teoh 