I am unabashedly a highly emotional person. I think much of it comes from how I’ve always felt the need to fill the space I’m in, however I can. When I have a rare moment of stillness, I soon feel the back of my mind bubbling like a cauldron, conjuring up whatever dregs of melancholy or curiosity or what have you it finds milling about back there. And when it finally boils over and that cocktail seeps into my consciousness, settling like a warm puddle after a much-needed rain, I breathe a sigh of relief.
It comes as no surprise, then, that I am no stranger to tears. Lines from a book, scenes in a film, a bitter winter wind, goodbyes and apologies all wear me down quicker than most. I’m the kind of person who leans into a sneeze or a yawn, who plugged her nose and closed her eyes and let the riptide carry her out instead of swimming decisively through the wave. When that feeling climbs up my spine and washes over me, I fall into it. I welcome the filling of my empty space.
Over the past year, I’ve become familiar with a different kind of wave: one that comes when I’m full to the brim in the best of ways. Something entirely different from the mix of joy and grief that comes with high school graduations or moving to a new town. Not the poignancy of big, swelling, half-sad half-happy milestones, but rather the little kernels of wonder that come in the smallest of moments. I’m talking about the happy tears. This phenomenon is somewhat new to me, as a self-proclaimed pessimist. To be so caught up in the gentle lull of waves on a beach, the cold condensation on a shared pitcher of sangria, or the particular phrasing of a line in a new poem that you find yourself crying through a smile is an odd feeling.
In trying to come up with why this has been happening to me, I've found that the scientific community has offered a few explanations. In general, psychologists believe that crying or otherwise “letting out” your emotions is more beneficial than holding them in, which can lead to detrimental long-term effects. Perhaps this can apply to happiness, too. Or maybe it’s because when we’re too excited, we impair our decision-making abilities, so crying might be a way of mitigating the impulsiveness that comes with joy. It has been found that people who express negative emotions as a response to overwhelmingly positive ones are better able to balance themselves and restore their mental equilibrium. All of this sounds plausible, I suppose.
I’m here to offer the subjective side. When I’m looking at a particularly nuanced sunset and I feel the hot tears welling up, I don’t feel like they’re there to save me. I don’t let them spill down my cheeks to gather at the corners of my smile and close it back up again, restoring balance to my mind. Maybe when all my empty space has filled up, I have to open the floodgates to give that cocktail somewhere else to go. Or, I’m aware that such a perfect moment couldn’t last or be remembered exactly as it was, and I’m starting to mourn that inevitable loss. It could be that I’m just surprised that I made it to this particular place in time; that I have the privilege of experiencing something so exquisitely, and in such a way that no one else will ever feel the same way I’m feeling.
More often than not, the tears come when I’m seeing something incredibly human. That is, something or someone wrapped up in delicious complexity. Last week, it was a line from a song that, combined with a soft mandolin riff, hit me like a bullet. Today, it was the kind of easy, insulting banter between friends that tells you they’ve shared enough memories to fill a valley. Who knows what tomorrow will bring, or if it’ll strike that hidden chord behind the floodgates. Whatever it is, it’s always a pleasure to be brimming with something. I can’t imagine experiencing things any other way than having them fill me all the way up.
