Emotions

My mom is a crier. TV shows, newspaper stories, commercials, you name it, she cries. A lot of people with mothers like that say they made fun of their mom growing up. They thought it was embarrassing or weird their moms cried so much. I wasn’t like that – I’ve always been a crier, too. I wasn’t as bad as my mom; when she’d be crying, I’d just be “misty.” The general theme of stories about people who made fun of their mom for crying is that it comes back to bite them when they grow up and turn into their mothers. Often it’s the birth of their first child – all the hormonal changes bring out the crier in them. Unfortunately, that happened to me, too. The birth of my child turned me into a weeper. Now, when something makes my mom cry, I’m sobbing. I read a newspaper article today and started shaking with tears. I cry when reality shows play the recap of a person’s journey on the show after they get kicked off. Even if I haven’t watched the show before. Now I’m embarrassed of myself. I can’t keep it together!

I’m not depressed, I’m just very emotional. It makes it hard to talk to people. Like when I wanted to talk through my feelings about being a working mom and couldn’t talk through the tears. Like now, when I want to talk about how it feels to stop breastfeeding and I can’t even write about it without crying. Its not because I’m overwhelmingly sad about it, either. My feelings are a lot more complicated than that. It’s the strength of my feelings – relieved, sad, and conflicted – that makes me cry. I think it sends the wrong message. Like the person I’m talking to thinks I’m depressed about something when I’m not. I’m just intensely emotional.

I could do with a little less emotion these days.