It is the not sleeping hours, the late night early morning in between time, dark and cold. I take to the wood stove, bare feet on the warm brick. The blue cast iron pan sizzles away with chunks of butternut squash and salt and red pepper flakes. It is the wood fire that does the hard work of turning them tender crisp for my eventual midday meal. I rub Lewie’s ear between my thumb and finger and he rolls over, rewarding me with full belly access.
This has been quite a week of life events, one after another busting in, elbowing each other for the spotlight, competing for center stage in this life. As I set my feet and prepare for this one thing, I am knocked off balance by the other thing that I never saw coming. I reset my feet and take a deep breath to recenter, when I’m sucker punched by the third thing. Some things are not yet my story to tell, even as they sit heavily on my chest. Even as they carve new grooves around the edges of my slightly downturned mouth. Even as they slide hot into the swirl of my belly.
I have been working on letting the feelings come. As children, when something hurts us, we cry. Somewhere along the way we absorb somehow that it’s better to be more in control of that and we damp them down, parceling them away with the silent promise that they can be felt later. Not now, people are watching. At some point, this becomes so well mastered that I can no longer cry at all, even when I want to, no matter how hard I will the tears to come. I no longer have to work to steel myself. Pushing the feels away has become muscle memory mortared into my very being by the you got this culture I tend to embrace with my whole heart.
Eventually, predictably, some small thing fractures me and weeks and months of hot tears and sobs are freed. It is not quite a relief. My throat tightens reflexively, trying to suppress it like vomit — knees on the bathroom floor, hands on the porcelain, fighting the hot acid that wants to come, unnaturally up.
I want to cry. I admire people who tear up easily and publicly. Be careful what you wish for, they warn. This week, not only can I cry, I can cry in front of others. I cry in front of my supervisor, in front of my coworkers, in front of my friends. I cry in front of the children and in front of their parents. I ugly cry with a weird shake-squeaky voice and distorted face. I watch it happening as if from over there and I think, yes, good, you got this, keep ‘em coming. Turns out it’s not strength I need to stop the tears from coming, but rather courage to let them come.
The sighing dog and ticking wood stove and aloneness in my own house are guides to serenity, a metronome for breaking through these well-built walls. Let them come down. Let solitude be less about taking the feels off the shelf and more about a place to center and harvest strength — the strength required to ugly cry whether they’re watching or not.