A time you've cried and no one would understand why.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

There are reasons to cry that anyone would understand. A funeral, high school graduation, etc. I remember leaving Saving Private Ryan and there in the back were 3 elderly ladies crying and that made sense. What was a time you cried where if someone did not know the backstory, you’d look like a blubbering fool? To make it interesting you can put your backstory in spoilers.

Mine? I’m in an airport gate and there is a girl about 13 trying to get someone to change seats so her and her brother can sit together on the plane. It was clear she was responsible for her brother who is a couple of years younger and playing on his Game Boy completely oblivious to her mechanations. I started weeping.

I could totally picture my daughter doing that with my son. It fit their personalities perfectly and the ages matched up for both of them. My daughter died when she was 3.

2

Shit, I cry at the end of Rocky and even I don’t understand why.

3

I don’t outwardly weep, but I always well up and have to hold the tears in when I watch the handshake lineup at the end of a hockey playoff series.

Chokes me up every time.

Of course, I love hockey, so…

4

When I was in 4th-6th grade, I went to this elementary school that had a pretty lame playground. There weren’t enough monkey bars/swings/tetherball poles so that most people could play. The boys took over the fields for team sports and the girls took over the monkey bars/swings/tetherball. For the most part. You had to be an alpha female to shove the other girls out of the way and get to the swings (or whatever your playground item of choice was) first. Nobody took turns and the teachers who monitored recess appeared to only care about blood and/or broken bones. As for 5th grade politics, we were on our own.

So way at the edge of the playground, past the soccer field, near the fence, was this very small cluster of trees. I’m a tree climber and so, because I could never get a swing or a spot on the monkey bars and I sucked at tetherball, I would run down to the fence, climb a tree and hang out in a tree. Well, some dumb shit girls fell off the monkey bars and broke their arms. After several broken arms, some adult in charge of something somewhere decided it was the trees that were a hazard. I went out for recess one day to witness some men cutting down my little cluster of trees. The boys in my class made fun of me all day for crying about the trees.

It wasn’t that I felt sorry for the trees; it was that I now had nothing to do at recess except walk around, trying not to get hit by an errant dodgeball ball. Recess really sucked for the rest of the time I was at that school.

5

I once started weeping in the car when I heard a radio ad for a local jeweler. It was a terrible commercial and I don’t really buy into the diamonds = how much my man loves me mentality, but I cried for the same reason I cry during Full House and life insurance commercials. Because real life just ain’t that way.

6

Very sorry to hear about that. Knowing that and seeing you in that situation would make it very understandable. Maybe more people than you think would pick up on that. But I can see people being a little self absorbed at the airport.

I’m known to tear up a little about some sentimental stuff, but I doubt people notice much.

7

I sat in my office and cried for several minutes when CoH went black. I still can’t explain my deep emotional attachment to that game, and world, but then, neither can about a zillion other people in this lost tribe.

8

A lot of times, I cry because I’m overstimulated, and it’s just a way to release the tension, but a lot of people don’t understand it.

I once cried while watching my youngest son, then around 8 or so, trick-or-treating. I can’t even explain how I felt, but there was just something about his little face, looking so happy and optimistic and trusting when he rang those doorbells, even thinking about it now makes me tear up. Weird. I am weird.

9

Sometimes during the Shabbat service, they carry the Torah scrolls down the aisles through the congregation – it’s called the Hakafah. People move toward the aisles so they can touch the scrolls, which are covered with beautiful, ornate “garments.” They touch with their hands, with their prayer books (and then kiss the book) or with the fringes of their prayer shawls (tallitot). I find this incredibly moving and it always brings me to tears. The Jews are called The People of the Book, and I feel that I was raised and nurtured by books the way other people were raised by their parents. So this ritual honoring and veneration of not even so much the word of God, but of the ancient written word itself…it just touches me at my deepest roots.

10

I once cried in an Italian restaurant because their sauce reminded me of my grandmother’s. In my defense, it was only a year or so after she had died.

11

I do this, too, and it absolutely NOT weird. It is sensitive and beautiful. People should cry more. Please don’t put yourself down for this.

12

Me, seven months pregnant, in an AT&T store upgrading my phone. As the clerk starts transferring the contacts, I tear up, then start crying a bit, and am quickly overtaken by full-blown sobs.

The context:
My father had died unexpectedly eight months before, and I was suddenly overcome by the realization that I would lose all his texts, all the games of Words with Friends we’d played. I lost it a little.

13

A guy at work was talking about how he helped his twenty-something daughter pick out an apartment.

I realized that he was a dad, doing a dad thing, for a female child he’d been around all her life. The witnessing of such a thing suddenly overwhelmed me and I had to step out for a moment.

Another: My son cleaned his room and got rid of all his toys.

One of the toys was a teddy bear. His father used to make it talk to him when he was a baby. His father is dead now and the boy obviously doesn’t remember when the bear talked… Well, I can’t finish this. You get it.

14

There is a part of the land for the plant where I work which is presumably intended to be available for expansion of the plant at some future date. It was natural sage desert. There were many lizards, a family of cottontails, roadrunners, etc. I would see 2-3 critters out there every morning.

Then we were purchased by a large multi-national company headquartered on the East Coast. One of the visiting big wigs decided the “weeds” out back looked shabby, and had the whole thing mowed to the ground with brush cutters. You know what grows when you strip the ground in the desert? Fucking nothing, that’s what…at least for the first three years. Then you get fucking goatheads.

Not only were all the critters put out of a home, but when we get our spring winds there are piles of dust blown in through the cracks in every door, because there are no “weeds” to stabilize the soil.

And they wonder why I am not impressed with the new overlords, and why I tear up when I see the now rare bunny in the parking lot.

15

I know there is no anonymity on the internet, but fuck it.

I used to have schizophrenia about 15 years ago. I never got competent medical care and I have very little to no respect for the adults in my life who were supposed to act like adults but failed. After several years of suffering from psychotic delusions (which were very abusive) the isolation was eating a hole in my soul. So I did what any person who makes bad decisions would in that situation, I started channeling my desperation and loneliness into women.

One day there was a girl I kindof knew who worked somewhat nearby. She seemed to like me, I liked her. So I wrote her a note telling her I liked her. I mentioned ‘if you are interested in meeting me, email me. If not I won’t bother you’. A few weeks pass, I don’t hear anything. Then I get an email from her asking me to meet her where she works.

I show up and instead of it being her it is a bunch of cops. I came on too strong and freaked her out. I was physically assaulted and repeatedly lied to by the police (those are not exaggerations either).

I felt like crying, but knew nobody would understand why. People would assume ‘he is crying because he loves that girl and wants to be with her’. But it wasn’t that. I was never in love with her. I was just extremely confused and desperate, and would’ve written letters like that to almost anyone. That event made me realize how alone I am/was in the world. How little people care about me, how disconnected from the human race I am. How people would never see past the awkward, weird exterior to see the desperately confused interior who needed help. How if I let my guard down, people would fear me and enjoy hurting me. They’d react with fear and hate to the exterior and never see what was going on beneath the surface. You never recover from an event like that. I have a permanent tear in my soul that never heals. I don’t know how I’m supposed to live the rest of my life like this.

That event has broken me spiritually and emotionally. Not because I want to spend time with those people (they are the most cold blooded people I’ve ever met. They could have told me to leave and they didn’t, at least not in a way I understood), but because it taught me how alone I am in the world. People enjoyed hurting me when I needed help the most, and nobody cared. I can’t go for help. I’m too sick and too mentally ill to take care of myself, and nobody else is going to do anything. There is nowhere to go.

And to be fair to me, she was an evil bitch. That is part of the problem. She lied to the police about how she knew me (she told them she hadn’t talked to me before) and lied and said she had told me to leave (she hadn’t). Also she called my house several dozen times after that incident, probably to rub my nose in the abuse I experienced at the hands of the police. Point is, she wasn’t a nice person. She lied to the police, contacted me numerous times after filing a restraining order against me and tried to ridicule me after I was abused by the police.

But that is part of the problem. I was so full of self hate I wouldn’t allow a decent person within a thousand feet of me. I liked her (unconsciously) because she was evil, I thought that was all I deserved in life.

What was I supposed to do? I was mentally ill, young and full of self hate. I had no competent adults in my life. I’m so fucking broken. How am I supposed to make it through the next 50 years?

16

I promise I’m not mocking you – but what is CoH?

17

Wesley, I am so sorry this happened to you. I’m not going to try to blow sunshine up your shorts… this is a difficult world, especially if you are alone and feel alone (not exactly the same thing, but often found together). Those moments when you are reminded how alone you are can hit like a baseball bat to the side of the head. And others who are plagued by too much responsibility and togetherness really don’t know what it is like. Somehow one does get through (I’m 64 now), mostly by looking at the ground in front of you and just ahead and not raising your eyes to the horizon too often. Listen for the birds, though, and the sound of the wind in the trees. You can hear them best when you are alone. {{Hugs}}

*Do we do hugs here, or are we too cool for that? *

18

Even after 13 years, many things that remind me of my son make me cry. Of course, I’ll cry at nostalgic commercials too, so maybe I’m just a cryer.

19

No, my husband died 13 years ago, and I will unexpectedly tear up when I really think about him. It’s not that I *miss *him exactly… it’s just a tender spot that will always be tender. I would think that would be even more tender for a child. (So sorry for your loss. :frowning: )

I found my H’s old Zippo lighter that he and the guys in his unit got in Viet Nam in 1967. It’s engraved with a map and his name. I took it to a tobacco shop to get it rehabilitated–and the guy fixed it right up. I don’t smoke, but my dad had a Zippo, too, and I love the sound it makes and the smell. I took it back out to my car and cried like a baby. I don’t ever want to get to the point where I can think of him and get in touch with those feelings and feel nothing.

Aside: He was a Medivac helicopter pilot (Dustoff) and he flew 1,000 missions. He told me that sometimes when they had to land in the jungle in the dark to pick people up the only light was guys standing in a circle holding up lit Zippo lighters. That gives me chills (and tears) just to write it… :frowning:

20

My parents both died in 1999. It’s been a while.

Still, when I think about them, or talk about them, at best I tear up, and some days just cry like a baby. I had much to say to them that I didn’t, and I hate that they can’t see how awesome my kids - all their grandkids - have become.

My wife just rolls her eyes at me and keeps on truckin’. Both her parents are still here…
Dammit, now look what you’ve done.