When’s the Last Time You Cried?
For New York magazine, Emily Gould writes about her quest to cry again: I Miss My Tears (archive).
I looked over at my husband, Keith, whose eyes were red, and felt … nothing. Not a clench in my chest, not a pang, not an incipient burning behind my eye sockets. It wasn’t totally surprising; by this point, I hadn’t cried for more than three years.
I’d started to suspect that something was wrong with me when a friend I’d known since childhood died and I didn’t shed a tear. I sat at her memorial service and felt something worse than nothing — a calcified layer around where feeling should have been, as if something were trapped in my body with no hope of emerging on its own. I noticed the absence at other times I would usually have sobbed. A late-night fight with my husband, at the point where any other form of communication feels impossible. Fifth-grade graduation, when the valedictorian thanked her teachers for helping her when she was going through chemo. Pixar movies, Call the Midwife, Sarah McLachlan singing “in the arms of the angel” — none of it moved me to tears. I wasn’t a monster, I was pretty sure. Something was wrong with me. I craved the cleansing sensation after the tears stop, that feeling in your sinuses that’s like you’ve been swimming in the ocean. The boneless relief that comes after sobbing has ceased to wrack your body and you can finally rest, absolutely drained. I had no idea what it would take to get back there, the place I’d been effortlessly able to access for the first 41 years of my life. But I would spend the next six months trying. I hoped it might even be fun.
I started taking an SSRI a few years ago with the goal of giving me enough space to approach life’s challenges without feeling completely overwhelmed (by anxiety, by depression). The medication didn’t “fix” me…it just kept the train from derailing all the time (sometimes over the smallest things) and gave me the freedom to work through things on my own and with my therapist.1
I was lucky to land on a good med/dose combo on my second try — the first pill I tried made me feel jittery and more anxious than I already was. But my current med does come with a couple of side effects. My sex drive is lower than it was (although that could also be age), which is not altogether unpleasant — a quieter mind in charge of things instead of a libido. The other side effect is that I don’t cry anymore, at least not as easily.
Crying is something I took up after my kids were born. Not often, but once every few weeks maybe. I cried when things got hard and for awhile, things were hard a lot of time: pandemic, parenting insecurity, divorce, living somewhere that really didn’t suit me, and always always the website & the discomfort of being an odd sort of “public figure”. Watching any movie with parents and kids (esp. dads and sons) got me — heck, even some Marvel movies got me. In sessions with my therapist, I cried when we’d hit a particularly tender vein of pain. As Gould says, the crying was cathartic and felt necessary — I always felt better and clearer afterwards.
But that’s mostly stopped since I’ve been on my meds. I still get sad, although less so, but I don’t cry. Movies don’t really get me going anymore. When my kids are struggling (in school, with friends), that gets me the closest. I miss that release — I feel a little pent-up sometimes. But I wouldn’t trade crying again for how I felt in the Before Times. I’m ok not having access to crying — at least for now.
I don’t usually talk about this sort of thing on the site and I don’t quite know why I’m talking about it now — Gould’s openness makes it easier maybe. And it may help someone else to hear about my experience? ↩
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I started Ketamine (Spravato) treatment recently, and it is great for giving you access to all the feels. I don’t really cry, cry, but often tear up, then get a bit of cathartic feeling later on. Highly recommended!
Since my mother died in 2013, I cry when I hear a woman speaking Kapampangan (the language of Pampanga Philippines where me, my sister, my mother and father were born) or somebody who sounds like my mother speaking Tagalog. Filipinos are the number 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 immigrant group to Canada for a few years now so my frequency of crying is increasing. It's tough. Grief comes in waves and is prismatic.
My mother tongue makes me cry instantly. We speak it everyday, but sometimes it's the arrangement of words, a familiar phrase, or piece of music that will turn me into a puddle. Ocean Vuong talks about this.
ocean vuong is so good! just finished the emperor of gladness!
Well I'm happy to say I "cry" from laughter more often than grief or sadness. I also don't feel overwhelmed or anxious very often. It's one of those things I take for granted until I read about how other people process life and the emotions they feel. Conversely I don't know if I feel the exuberant highs and exhilaration that many others seem to feel occasionally. I think my lows are not very low but my highs are also not that high. Hard to say because I think I can find joy pretty easily.
It's refreshing to hear from a man on topics like this. I think it's great that you're sharing, especially as a model for your kids and other men. I shed tears pretty often. At least a couple of times a week, mostly because I'll have a fond memory from childhood, a tender moment with someone, will hear a song, or I'm in a sensitive part of my menstrual cycle. I come from a very large and expressive family, so it's always been this way and thankfully welcomed. But I noticed I became much more comfortable crying in public when I started working in schools. Being around kids from all walks of life, engaging with parents during both difficult and joyous moments, and celebrating achievements vanquished a lot of my embarrassment around strangers. I no longer care if people see me bawling at graduations. I used to feel self-conscious before. I've never taken any medications that would alter this, but as a woman sometimes I worry what menopause will do to me. Will I lose some natural entry points into my emotions that the "microseasons" of my period allow?
Swati, my menopause natural emotion entry points experience has been a super-highway with ten lanes plus an HOV corridor! It's macroseasons, all the time! No shortage of ups, downs, or sideways-s. Feelings always. Tears and crying a plenty. That may make it sound bad, but I don't experience it that way. It's just a vibrant emotional life, more connected to the world around me, more fully alive and engaged. Here's hoping you maintain your entry points down the road as well!
I've never been much of a cryer and more often over books or movies than life - Roger Ebert's observation that he cried more at goodness than at sadness in movies captured my own feelings. But in the spring, when the stress of opening my shop was really getting me worn down, I put on Tim Minchin's Play it Safe and just started bawling in a way I've never done. It felt good - cathartic and bracing.
Fascinating! I'm so glad you've shared your experience. I, too, had jitters and anxiety on the first antidepressant I tried. It took a lot of tries for me to find the right one, including one that worked but made it impossible to orgasm (ugh). I haven't been on medication in quite a while now, thanks to therapy and changes in life. What I found particularly fascinating about what you've shared (I haven't read the Gould yet) is that while I too experienced the muting of emotions when on meds, I've always found that *not* crying is a significant indicator that I'm in the midst of a depressive episode.
I do not cry often, but seemingly more likely when traveling and alone (e.g. in the middle of a silent meditation retreat). My father cries without reserve, it is both beautiful and yet still uncomfortable when I think of others watching me cry.
Two unexpected tears:
Witnessing the Yomiuri Giants Cheering Club chanting in Euro-soccer level unison from the entire outfield of Tokyo Dome last week. Such intense, coordinated, harmonic unity directed at such an arbitrary goal. If we could only all be so cohesively joyous and oriented toward the less arbitrary challenges we face together. Such belonging and celebration.
When purchasing two knives from Kappabashi Street’s Kama-Asa, at the unexpected realization I could ask them to inscribe the Japanese lettering of my recently departed dog’s name (Pixie) upon the handle of the smaller blade. The sublimely attendant, English-speaking French-expat salesman asked if I needed a hug, and I could not decline his embrace. Grief finds the cracks.
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