Crying In Public For One Week Straight

The week following my breakup was very interesting. 

To start this off, I must say that I am not much of a crier. As a child, I, of course, cried like all others, but not often out of pure sadness or disappointment.

My fits of crying paired more regularly with rage. As my parents remind me, I would sometimes furiously bite the doorknobs of our home (weird) and try to hang on to them with my mouth to try to prove some sort of strange point about getting what I wanted. 

As you can imagine, that didn’t really work.

My point is that I do experience strong emotions, just not always released in a normal way, such as weeping. Let me just note that this biting thing is not something I really do now. 

However, after my breakup, I found myself crying uncontrollably and unpredictably for about four or five days. 

My ponderings

Being late now, I have analyzed my situation many times and have deduced that much of my reaction is the result of shock. I spent three years of my life being with someone, and then one day it was just over.

Another reason I found my crying so forceful was the terms of the breakup. It wasn’t angry at all, only sad. There was no betrayal, no hard feelings, and neither of us felt “burned”. It was just something that needed to happen.

I am also fortunate to be someone who is rarely ever sad, unless there is a very good reason to be. For a not-sad person to be suddenly consumed with pure sadness was something indescribable. 

I like to wear my sunglasses in public because they are a great way to avoid the accountability of an awkward hello or a shared glance of recognition, something we in Isla Vista have to endure every which way we turn in this hauntingly small, one-mile-long town we live in.

Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, the very week of my breakup, my sunglasses broke.

Tragic. 

My Public Experience

I walked to class each day with tears rolling down my cheeks. It felt pointless to try to hold them back, and I took my broken sunglasses as a sign that I would be better off expressing myself wholeheartedly. 

This is where you might be surprised. Not only did I allow myself to stumble around crying on campus in front of everyone I had ever met, but I held myself to the same standard in the classroom. 

At the beginning of this school year, I made a pact with myself to participate in class as much as I could, even though it was extremely uncomfortable at times. My classes are usually intimate, with most of them having a maximum of 15 people. 

When I don’t actively engage with the content, I find myself distracted, maybe looking at a photo of Chloë Sevigny on Pinterest, or a questionably dirty vintage t-shirt on Depop (right now I’m into this one!). 

Not engaging simply does not work in my situation, as my professors transmit most important information orally, do not upload lecture slides, and expect you to remember things like which poet died miserably of tuberculosis in what year versus which one was assassinated by her ex-husband. 

As a stubborn person, I was determined not to let my breakup-induced sadness interfere with my goals. I raised my hand like normal and participated in discussions between fits of tears.

I’m sure people wondered what possibly could have been going on, but I think the beauty of college is that people are always going through it. Whether expressed publicly or not, everyone endures terrible times.  

My Revelations

I was shocked to not feel judged at all. I found that the less I impeded myself from expressing my feelings, the quicker I came to terms with my new reality.

One of my anthropology classes, which I usually dreaded due to its three-hour length and lack of structure, ended up greatly helping me along in this journey. The class, which centered around putting emotion at the forefront of activist scholarship, included dyad exercises.

One person in the dyad was to speak uninterrupted for two minutes, with their partner not responding at all or interjecting their opinion. Then it would switch, and the next person would have their turn. 

In some terribly divine timing, the prompt for that week’s dyad conversation was “How are you feeling emotionally this week? What is going well, and what is not going well?” Wonderful! 

Nevertheless, I spoke the entire two minutes of my turn and did not skimp on details. Throughout the week, and after each emotional outburst, I was able to ground myself until I returned to my tearless self. 

My Inevitable setbacks

This isn’t to say that after 5 school days, I was completely stable. In the next week, I became reacquainted with rage.

At one point that week, I stampeded through a tour group walking towards me, and the next day I was accosted by someone with a petition and a clipboard by the Arbor. 

In a pure manic frenzy, I smacked the clipboard out of her hand. It fell on the cement and broke. While I later felt sort of embarrassed about doing this, I reminded myself once again that no one really cares.

I don’t mean that no one cares if you scare them and break their clipboard, but rather, no one is focused on you crying, or raging, or stampeding, because once again, everyone is honestly just occupied with their own issues.

My progress

If you asked me a year ago if I would rather cry in front of a room full of people (or even go as far as to speak-sob to them) or jump off a cliff, I would have chosen the cliff. 

The amazing thing about choosing to do what I did is that I now feel like I could do a million difficult or embarrassing things, without any of them feeling nearly as exposing as what I went through. 

While it’s painful in the moment to feel all of your feelings, I would much rather endure that than suppress them.

I read a few chapters of the book “My Grandmother’s Hands” for my anthropology class, which described “clean pain” versus “dirty pain”. Although the book centers on racial trauma, the author’s insights on general pain resonated with me. 

Resmaa Menakem, the author, explains that clean pain, which, although acute in the moment, enables healing. Dirty pain is the opposite, and is filled with blame, denial, and avoidance. He says that dirty pain can lead a person to become angry, cruel, and, in general, avoidant. 

I don’t think you can cheat your own brain by accepting the dirty pain.

Although I eventually ended up buying some new sunglasses at a fat price, as an excuse to treat myself, if I go through something like this again, I’ll be taking them off and exposing my puffy eyes to the world once again. 

• college
• love
• mental health