The Emotional Digestive System

I’ve been crying recently, only on Sundays, for the last four to five weeks. Admittedly, I’m going through a tumultuous period of my life. One with a lot of highs and lows. I’ve made some strides professionally. Certainly this blog has been a positive development thus far. It appears I'm being well received as a new voice/writer. Yet, at the same time I've probably never felt more alone. I've never felt more distance from my family than at the current time. And it seems I've lost my close circle of friends, friends who, in many ways, represented my life until a year or so ago. These friends who've known me more than half my life are now becoming memories... and that's sad.

When I think about it, I feel like the crying is a problem. Like there must be some sort of issue with me. If I could choose to cry or not cry, I would choose not crying. But the reality is that I tend to feel better after I’ve cried. Like I just released toxins. Like I took an emotional shit, and I’m ready to shower up and go out, or to sleep, or, you know, whatever. I'm ready to move on.

This made me think about how closely we monitor our digestive system. How we take care to eat, and subsequently shit every day. Drink, and subsequently piss. And those of us who care, we try to watch what we intake.

It seems to me we also have an emotional digestive system. Interaction is how we ingest food. Stimuli is our food and drink. Then we laugh, cry, react and express. The two fundamental means of release are laughing and crying. So perhaps like shitting and peeing, we should be doing them once a day. Or at least once every couple days.

Crying is such an incredibly repressed emotion. It’s weak, vulnerable, unevolved? At the end of last year I had an interesting run where on three consecutive occasions, girls I had relations with cried. And all three occasions were, for the most part, our first physical interaction or hanging out. First time encounters.

The story made an interesting conversation-piece at parties and bars. Was I attracted to crybabies? Was I doing something that warrants crying? To cut a little deeper, was I attracted to an emotional instability? Do my pheromones contain the essence of all the mistakes women have made with regards to guys over the course of eternity?

The stories were discussed, poked and prodded. But no one ever really came to the defense of the criers. Sure, some suggested it might be my fault. We joked about me needing to stop with the punches to the kidney. Or shave. Or try deodorant. Harty har-har (I've since gotten some Axe *cue female moan*). But no one ever asked, what’s wrong with crying? Some said they've experienced dates crying, but never on a first encounter. First encounter crying was most certainly judged as taboo.

And I think in general most of us would raise eyebrows if someone cried on a first encounter.

But you don’t really raise an eyebrow if they take a piss or shit in front of you (might raise an eyebrow for #2). Which, though not desirable, per se, and might even represent a major deal-breaker for some, would be understandable, and not likely mandate a severing of ties for most people. Everyone has to piss and shit, right?

Maybe the problem is you're not supposed to emotionally relieve yourself in public. If the person can’t have the dignity to go to the bathroom, relieve themselves in private, then maybe they deserve to feel that shame. I’d certainly run away from someone who just started peeing or taking a shit on my bed. But if they excuse themselves, and come back obviously “less heavy” … might as well move on right?

Crying holds so much power over us. Crying represents our unknown. We don’t embrace it. It represents our fears. Our lack of confidence. Our lies and deceit. Our loss. Our mortality. Our humility. Our inability to overcome. Our paradox. Our confusion. We hide it. Behind closed doors and sheets of tissue paper, we bury our tears, far away from prying eyes. There's no crying in baseball. The boss can't cry. The only people who cry are overwrought bloggers trying to rationalize their gayness (no homo) via herby posts that are not so much "poignant, as they are thinly veiled attempts to bait females with some generic brand of "emotional cheese" ... etc. etc. etc.

But maybe we can get more comfortable with the crying thing. The release of toxins. What's the big deal?

"Oh Sam? He's just taking an emotional shit. We'll get this meeting underway in just a bit."

And maybe once we get comfortable with it, we can do it more. And maybe once we do it more, we'll find ourselves feeling less emotionally constipated.

Ok. I think that's the extent of the thought for now.

I'm going to go take a crap. A real one.

Please cry for me Blog-entina?