I guess it's better than having gas...

I cry a lot now.

It's not because I'm sad or depressed. It's not necessarily because I'm really happy, either.

The thing is; somehow my emotional wires have crossed. Whatever it is inside me that triggers my tear ducts has malfunctioned. Instead of reacting to the "normal" emotions that tears accompany, the damn thing reacts to just about every emotion I have. It's like whatever "it" is has given up on its job of sorting through the feelings in my head. "To hell wid it. She so fucked up she don't know whetha to scratch er' watch or wind er' ass. I can't keep up. Let er' cry ever day fer all I care." (Apparently, not only is the voice of my emotion tremendously insensitive, but from backwoods Arkansas.)

When I'm with someone I even remotely care about, and this fact crosses my mind when I'm with them...tears. When I get pissed off...tears. When a song on the radio reminds me of something I did or saw or said once upon a time...tears. When I think of something funny...tears. When love (or hate, for that matter) in any of its forms breezes through me momentarily...tears. When my cereal gets soggy...tears. And this is the worst one....when I talk to someone about something that's important to me...my body immediately coerces me cry. This is immesively inconvenient because I'm typically a very sincere person. I rarely talk about anything that isn't of some importance to me. As horrifying as this is to admit, I've had to tell colleagues in two different meetings lately that my "allergies were acting up" so that they wouldn't realize I was actually tearing up over what was being discussed. The excuse was perfectly believable both times, but I was secretly humiliated.

WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON??

In one way, I feel intensely connected to the world right now, but in another way, I feel numb to much of it. I'm an island surrounded by electrically charged water....standing alone but constantly submerged by shockwaves. I think maybe the combination of the two extremes is the cause of this. Raw, unprotected emotion knows no other way to express itself than through tears....exhausted, disconnected emotion that doesn't have the strength to hold back or be creative resorts to tears by default.

It amazes me that some people go years without crying. How is that possible? Does that mean that they are so in the world that they can't feel it pressing against them, or has all the water around their islands evaporated?