When You Cry for the First Time in a Long Time

I’m going to be completely honest here — I cried last night for the first time in a really long time.

I had just gotten home from the gym. I ran a few miles on the treadmill after work, after having somewhat of a mentally and emotionally taxing day.

The minute that I got home, I put my stuff down and immediately started putting away dishes that were left in the dish rack from the night before.

My boyfriend came over to welcome me home and I was just standing there sobbing, with a plate in one hand and a fork in the other.

From there, it kind of just snowballed into one of those ugly cries — The kind of crying where your throat hurts, you can’t breathe, and your eyes are all puffy.

My eyeliner was completely smudged and had formed rings around my eyes that made me look like a raccoon.

Finally, after I had gotten past my inability to speak, I started completely unleashing every detail of what had been bothering me at work for the past few weeks.

Eventually, I stopped. I wiped the tears from my face, hugged my boyfriend, and felt at peace.

It just felt good to get all of those suppressed emotions out. It felt good to have somebody to tell.

The thing is, crying is often seen as a form of weakness.

For men particularly, crying is seen as un-masculine and it’s not something that’s typically encouraged, especially in the past.

For me personally, I don’t cry easily. I don’t like to cry. It’s very difficult for me to shed a tear just because I saw a sad commercial or movie.

Don’t get me wrong — I’m not a robot. I do have emotions and they do get hurt. I do cry when I really need to let it out.

It’s just that it’s been a while since I’ve gotten to the point of bottling up my emotions for that long.

I’ve had many difficulties in the past few years, but my immediate reaction was always anger first, which I eventually channeled into running or writing.

My Father is not the kind of man to ever let anyone see when he is sad or in pain, and I think I must get that from him.

In the past, whenever I was going through a difficult situation, I would displace my emotions and turn to anything other than crying or talking it out.

I always hated being sad — I just didn’t know what to do with myself. I hated being vulnerable and I hated dealing with my problems.

Ultimately, I learned that bottling up your emotions and letting them fester was only just delaying a ticking time bomb.

Whatever you’re feeling will eventually come out and could possibly turn into something much worse than if you had just admitted your emotions to yourself.

We all go through tough things in life and we all have our own ways of handling those situations.

Not everyone cries.

We all cope in different ways and the time that it takes for each of us to heal can be wildly unpredictable. There is no sure way to tell how long it will take.

But, just know that you will get through whatever it is that you are going through — And don’t lie to yourself when you know that you are in pain.

Again, it will come out one way or another.

Pain and sadness always have a funny way of catching up to us, especially when we happen to be avoiding it.

For me, that moment was last night.