Something amazing happened last Valentine’s Day. I was listening to music a friend sent me- and I started to cry. Real sobs from the gut, unstoppable. And I hadn’t cried like that in a long time. That feeling artists sing about, the yearning, the total immersion in the beloved, is so ephemeral, and ultimately, too capacious to be fully satisfied by another human being. It’s the longing you feel beginning with teen-age when you realize you are a separate person, and then you think you can fulfill it if you search long and hard enough. And maybe you do. You fall in love, hoping it will last forever.
I didn’t mind the tears. I have missed my tears. I am not bi-polar, or even clinically depressed, so I want to make clear I am speaking only for myself. I went through a bad patch for a few years, having to deal with too many stressful events at the same time – loss of loved ones, moving homes and countries – and so my very well-meaning primary care doctor gave me “anti-anxiety” pills. I was able to cope with what seemed overwhelming details in establishing a new home in a country I hadn’t lived in for 23 years, in a state I had never lived in, and the grief. I was grieving so many things. And I stopped crying. I stopped laughing so hard I cried. I stopped feeling angry. I stopped feeling dizzy with the beauty of a sunset. And everything was just fine.
But then some belated spring-time broke through the bland okay-ness of my days. I wanted to connect more deeply with others. I wanted sex, so long a distant, stale, memory. I wanted the intimate touch of another human being. I wanted to fully experience everything I could as fully as I could; to immerse my self in life before it’s gone, before I’m gone to wherever it is we go, if anywhere, and I don’t need to know..I wanted to fall in love with life again.
So I have now weaned myself off my happy pills. When I am sad, I am very sad. When I laugh, I really laugh, and when the russet, rain-wet bark of the crape myrtle lights up with radiant morning sunshine, I experience bliss.
I would far rather experience the depths of my soul than skim over the top and be what I suppose is called happy.
It’s a gift to be able to weep.
Beautifully expressed feelings that many of us have but cannot Express as well.