I get it. It's absolutely awful. I’m just being honest, crying sucks. It’s my least favorite emotional reaction. I can count the amount of times I’ve really cried in the last 3 years on one hand. I’ve never been the overly emotional type. It always shocks my friends when I get the slightest bit emotional. I’ve always hated everything that comes with crying; the clogged nose, the skull-splitting headache, the raw throat. I just look nasty. I hated it so much that I figured out how to prevent it from happening all together.

Sounds a little crazy, right? It’s supposed to be an involuntary reaction, not something you can stop. For the longest time, I saw crying as the ultimate form of personal weakness. The ultimate lack of control in my life. I hated the feeling of helplessness, and all of the feelings that were attached to crying. So I figured out how to stop it. The moment my throat started to thicken and my chest tighten, my eyes started to prick, I’d hold my breath and change my train of thought. Almost instantly, the need to cry goes away. I felt like I’d found the ultimate life hack, that it was going to make my life so much easier. I didn’t realize how incredibly wrong I was.

For years now, I feel the need to cry well up inside me then immediately dissipate, leaving me angrier each time it disappears. The most I can get out is a few rogue tears before the feeling melts away, unless I’m absolutely gutted/sad/hurt. I haven’t been able to have that “good cry” that just helps you move on and calm down.

Ironically enough, I live with three amazing girls who thrive on the “good cry” mentality. At first, it sincerely overwhelmed me when they cried. I never had experienced so many tears before college. I didn’t know what to do, especially when more than one of them were crying at the same time. They’ll go from laughing, to crying, back to laughing in the span of 10 minutes. To quote one of them, they “cry when the weather changes.” It baffles me how quickly they can cry, like it’s a skill that they have all acquired and that part of me is just broken. They cry regularly, yet they’re some of the strongest people I know. So how was it that every time I cried, I felt so weak, so juvenile?

I had a rough day last week. One of those days where pretty much everything just goes wrong. This day was on the heels of two weeks that were filled with midterm papers, exams and presentations. Stress levels were high. I thought I had temporarily escaped the aggravation of school for a few days, but I was wrong. I had reached a breaking point, that surprised me how much I needed it.

For the first time in a long time, I had that “good cry.” I sat and just let it happen. Besides that annoying headache that followed, I felt lighter. Less tense, more languid and relaxed. It wasn’t all that bad. I was shocked, that I didn’t feel so weak, so vulnerable.

I hadn’t seen the “human” aspect of crying in a long time. It’s something that everybody does. We’re not supposed to be these infallible, unshakeable creatures. We’re meant to react. To love, to laugh, to cry, to scream. We’re supposed to feel the full range of emotions—the good, the bad, the ugly. Preventing myself from expressing and feeling sadness, fear, pain, had truly hindered the way I was living.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not going to turn into the girl who cries every day. It’s not who I am. I still hate the act of crying. But I’m not going to cut myself off from feeling anymore, or at least try to prevent it from happening. I owe it to myself to live a full life with all of its parts, even the not so nice parts, and crying allows that to happen.