to cry

Tonight.

Tonight I solidified an idea in my head which may prove to be very useful for me in the next couple of weeks. But let me approach this in a way that isn't just hella sad. So crying. There will be a lot of crying  in the next couple of weeks. Most of it probably won't be bad crying--there probably won't be any moments when people's faces will contort unattractively, as is common for pained crying. No. It will be the soft crying associated with uncertainty-tainted change and the melancholic twinges people feel watching children grow up or feeling proud of someone for the first time. When you cry like this, you still maintain a semblance of attractiveness if you had any in the first place because you can manage to smile. And even if you can't smile, you can at least smile with your eyes, as Tyra Banks always says.

No. And I've cried. I've cried at least once in the last ten days. I was handing in my thesis final. I had heard my dad say he liked my writing, and even though I had jokingly told him I seriously doubted he had read the entire thing, I still found myself tearing up at the thought of my dad reading a piece of writing which contained snippets of in-depth medical-profession information I could only have gained insight to from him. The few people who walked past me outside of the student center probably thought I was crazy. But I am.

I don't like it. I don't like crying in front of people. I enjoy crying, I think, but probably because the physical action of crying is so... intricately interesting. Like, the fact that tears are hot is something that I think is fascinating. Or the fact that it hurts to breathe. There's just so many small details about crying that make it almost, almost, pleasurable. PLEURA (anatomy term).

Anyway, what my big discovery was, and now I almost feel embarrassed to say anything, because I just said how much I enjoyed crying, was how to stop crying. Forever.

Well, at least for me. You always know when you're about to cry, no? Haha, I don't want to date myself (incorrect?) but it's similar to feeling like you're about to have an orgasm, or finally understanding the spatial arrangements of quadratura. Or the few moments--longer than a second--between first putting a giant wad of wasabi in your mouth and the first painful sensations of having your entire sinuses cleared out. YOU KNOW IT'S GOING TO HAPPEN. I know when I'm about to cry. I know, also, when I just want myself to cry, even if I wouldn't actually be able to conjure up a tear because I am feeling no emotions.

Well, turns out I've felt like crying at all times of the day and under many different circumstances. The only time I can guarantee that I won't start crying, sadly, is if I'm under the influence of alcohol. Now! I don't want to get too excited about this. It is only a preliminary finding, after all. Personally, I think that the biggest compounding variable is the correlation between drinking and my proximity with other people. The only way to test this would be to have me drink alone, which is a fairly big no-no. But then, if I drank alone there's no reason why I should feel any form of bittersweet emotions.

Ah yes, so who knows what will happen over the next week. I can't drink all the time.