Alicia Zhang 11: Crying

   I cry very easily. Though I typically maintain a stoic face during the day, the truth is that I'm more sensitive than I'd like to be, and seemingly minor incidents for others become a very big deal to me. When I fail, I obsess over what I did wrong and find it hard to move on. It's a broken record playing out in my head, but I can't ignore the off-key music and I end up faltering instead of picking myself up. It's not like there was anyone else around me with the same problem either; only I cried over something as meaningless as a missed bus in middle school. The root cause might just be an extraordinarily low sense of self-esteem, but if that was the case, wouldn't I be much more distraught in the face of personal issues rather than petty matters? I don't know the answer to why I'm so unable to hold my tears in when I need to, and for much of my life, I've hated myself for this seeming weakness of mine.

    I was in 6th grade, and I'd missed the school bus back home by a hair. Walking back inside school, I felt like the worst scum in the world. Negative thoughts circled around in my head, and I ended up secluding myself in the bathroom as I felt myself lose my emotional control. What upset me the most wasn't my missing the bus, but rather that I'd cried in the first place. What would my mom think of me when I came back home with puffy, reddened eyes? A teacher came by at this moment of reflection, and they questioned me for as to why I was crying. I don't remember much of their words of comfort, but I do remember that they told me that it wasn't wrong to cry. That was the first time I'd ever been told such a thing, and these words directly contradicted my mother's teachings. I told the teacher that crying was a sign of weakness, and people would assume me a pathetic lout hardly worth anyone's time. Even more than that, my mother would hate me for this, or give me her classic expression of silent disappointment when I returned home. To this, the teacher had no clear answer; real life isn't a feel-good movie, and they certainly weren't a counselor.

   When I came back home, my prediction was correct. My mother simply looked disappointedly at me, and that was that. The strong devour the weak, and I was not one of the strong when I cried over something so pathetic. Still, I kept coming back to that teacher's words. If I can't push my emotions away, I might as well accept them. So what if others think less of me for crying? It's not like I'm much of a social butterfly in the first place. I'd much rather let loose with all my stresses and hurts by crying rather than keep them pent up inside and suffocate myself. I suppose, with time, I've come to accept that while crying isn't optimal and often feels like time wasted, it is a part of who I am. There's a stigma that comes with crying that isn't entirely deserved. Emotions can't stay locked up forever without consequences, and crying lets those emotions out. It's okay to cry, regardless of your gender or identity. How do you feel about crying, and do you think it's a sign of weakness or not?