the return of the cry

I was maybe ten, standing in the parking lot of a hospital with my cousins, waving to my aunt who was on the fifth floor supposedly waving back to us. I couldn’t see her. They didn’t let children into hospitals then, so we stood outside hoping to catch a glimpse of her. My cousin Terry said she could see her and immediately started crying, which set off my other cousins crying. The hospital was a bad place; you only went there if you were really sick and if you were old you might never come out. My aunt was in her 40s. That was old to ten year old me. So I worried. But I didn’t cry. I tried, because everyone else was crying and I was sure they would all think I didn’t care if I didn’t cry. I rubbed my eyes to make them water so it would look like I had tears. But I just couldn’t cry.

Funerals and weddings came and went, occasions where everyone around me cried and I stood stoic and tearless. It’s not that I had no emotion about these things, I did. I felt deep sadness, unbridled happiness, but I just couldn’t — wouldn’t — cry about. I didn’t cry tears of joy when my children were born, I didn’t cry when I had a miscarriage, I didn’t cry when I realized my marriage was over. The pain I felt for bad things hurt me to my core; the joy I felt at the good things overwhelmed me. But there were no tears.

I felt there was a piece of me missing, that something was fundamentally wrong with me. I never talked to anyone about, I just went on feeling shame for not having the emotional capacity for tears.