Wasted Tears

It's been a year today since I sat down and wrote the first post What is Courage? for this blog. I started writing to try and work through all the tough stuff that I thought I was going through at the time. At the time I felt like the world was crashing down on me and like everything was oh so difficult.

Someone, or several people probably, told me that one day I'd look back on that first month (or first several months) and laugh at how silly I was. Now when I look back and read through my entries from the first few months I don't really find much humor in them. I've never been one to not own my feelings. I feel completely justified in being upset, but with a year of perspective I almost feel stupid about how upset I was.

I'm a pretty emotional person and I cry a lot. I'm okay with it. It's almost an involuntary response sometimes. I cry when I'm frustrated, when I'm angry, sometimes when I'm tired. I cry at movies, and books, and sad country songs, and commercials, and sappy internet stories. I cried while I wrote many of these blog posts. I have even been known to get a little misty eyed with pride for someone else's accomplishments - like watching someone win a gold medal. When guys cry, forget it. I'm a mess.

I didn't cry all the time when I lived alone in DC. Not every night, not every day... probably more often than I did the year before, but not an extraordinary amount. Except for during my first week up there. One day in particular, when I'd had a frustrating day at work, and was having trouble figuring out how to get a Metro card, and mistakenly took the bus from Rosslyn to Annandale and it took 2 hours, and I was hungry, and had a headache, and my phone was dead. I started crying on the bus (it really started in front of the guy who finally sold me my Metro card) and I didn't stop for about 4 hours. When I finally made it home to my empty apartment (my stuff didn't get delivered for a whole week) I fell down on my air mattress and cried harder and longer than I had in a long time. I was lonely and tired and frustrated and I did NOT want to be in DC. I felt trapped. I was ugly crying - crying so hard that I got all blotchy and red-faced, and snotty, and puffy.

At the time it felt good to cry that much. I felt like I deserved to be that sad because this was the hardest thing I'd ever had to go through. Except it wasn't really. Looking back those were a lot of misused tears. Tears that should be cried for true pain and suffering. Not because you're lonely and frustrated with your life. Not because you miss you friends. I feel stupid for wasting my epic sorrow tears on something that in the grand scheme of things wasn't really all that horrible.

 

I love this card. I bought with no one to give it to, just because I thought it was hilarious and also a good life lesson. I love this card because it reminds me that on the bad day scale...no matter what happened or how I'm feeling... at least I didn't miss the boat that caused my whole species to become extinct. Right now it's something I need to remember. I need to learn how to keep things in perspective and focus on the bigger picture of life. I need to stop wallowing in self-pity and wasting tears on "problems" that aren't really all that big. I know too many people who have real issues they're facing. Too many people who have, and are, experiencing pain and loss and sorrow. People who are fighting and struggling against bigger things than a strained back and a lack of self-control. Things more worthy of epic sorrow tears than a frustrating, lonely day.