I cry because he asks me what I need, and I can’t answer. Thoughts swell in my head like a storm, whipping in anxiety’s wind, I cannot get a deep breath and collect myself. When he puts his arms around me, holding back is not an option and my face grows hot and wet with tears. I feel my muscles tighten and the tentacles of sadness too big for words wrap themselves around my heart, my lungs, my stomach, and bend me in two.
I cry at the realization that I am still holding back. Despite his presence, and his words which I fully believe, that I am loved, that I never have to be alone again, that I am so broken that I haven’t been sharing all of myself. When I don’t, it comes out as irritability and I seem annoyed. I feel guilty for spending our precious free time together sobbing in his arms.
I cry because I transition as gracefully as a giraffe on stilts, wobbling this way and that, unnatural and stuttering. For so long, I have been just holding on, just getting through, doing the best I can. Now with a new home and a good job, it hasn’t sunk in that I don’t have to be worried all the time or be in “emergency mode.” For a year and a half I have felt that my life was on hold, in limbo, and coming out of that limbo isn’t proving to be a whole lot easier than it was going in.
I cry because my heart is always so open, and I see people close to me in pain. Heartbreak comes in so many forms, small and big, everyday and out of the ordinary. With my ability to love so fully and whole-heartedly comes leaving pieces of my heart walking outside my body, connections with beautiful, amazing people that give me so much love and whose pain I feel deep inside.
I cry because the one thing that has been truly constant, and something positive that I’ve been able to work towards, has been taken from me. The aching empty clenching in my heart rages at the loss of control and power, that familiar feeling of helplessness. I can’t express the enraging madness I feel at once again being the receiver of abuse and the one required to make the sacrifice.
I cry because the chaos of moving isn’t just chaos. It represents trying to be on my own and start a new life, when my life has fallen so completely to pieces three times in the last five years. Despite everything, fear lurks beneath the surface. I don’t trust completely that I can move from surviving to living again after so many stumbles.
I cry because I feel the weight of being burdensome, a broken record of insecurity and weakness and melancholy, and I wonder who would ever want to spend their life listening to that record on repeat? I worry that the refrain that I am having a HARD TIME will get so old that no one will want to listen or reassure me that it is okay.
I cry because somewhere deep inside I think I am not enough. Like a rolling fog, the thought skulks that I am not worth it, that I am not doing enough, that I am not on top of it, that I can’t do this, that I am not a good parent or a good partner, that I will always fail. Fear hisses, a slow leak you don’t notice until you are approaching flat and suddenly precariousness overtakes security.
I cry because I it is the only way to move forward. The release of all of this comes through my eyes, my body racked with the sobs of cleansing. When he tells me that I am safe, that it’s okay, that I will never be alone again, that he loves me… it blows away a little bit of that fear inside me. I cry harder as I feel it go, because it is a part of me and it is lost, and I have held it there for so, so long.
I cry, and I breathe, and the tension goes, and I am one step further than I was this morning.
I cry.
