I am known, among those who know me, as one whose tears quicken easily. Those who live with me have always had to live with this tendency, but few have welcomed it.
“Stop crying.”
“You cry too much.”
“You need to become stronger.”
But with every attempt to suppress my crying, to shield themselves from it, these people have awoken deep within me a pious, reassuring voice telling me to pay no heed. The pious voice knows a secret that they do not:
Crying was, and always has been, my truest religion.
We who practice this religion are oft-persecuted, but zealots that we are, we do it anyway. In the dark-ish and darkest moments of my life, when I have felt alone, small and unseen, my tears have kept me company. They are my guardian angels, little mirrors reflecting my pain back to me, so that I might know that I am seen. My sobs are my prayers. They reverberate through the air, through my flesh, in my bones, and back to my own ears, that I might know that I am heard. When I cry, I tremble like the supplicant who is touched by the divine and transformed.
Whatever my brokenness, however pathetic I think I am, crying makes my suffering sacred. When I tell myself the stories of the injustices I have suffered and witnessed, and then cry about them, suddenly my human frailty is elevated to epic greatness. Each battle for my own significance becomes enshrined in the mythology of me. And more importantly, I am rescued from oblivion. Crying is the great triumph at the end of the battle, when the hero prevails and proves, once and for all who are there (which is usually just me), that she matters.
Since my God is my self and I am everywhere, I can cry anywhere. But my favorite place to cry is at the altar of my bed. In every home I have ever lived in, I have had a shrine where I say prayers and call on the divine. But when I feel truly helpless, truly ready to surrender, I go to the bed. I wrap myself in whatever holy shroud is on it, and begin to weep. When time allows, weeping gives way to crying and crying gives way to sobbing. The shroud doubles as a vessel for the holy waters that flow. If I keep at it, if I properly humble myself, my prayers are answered, and I receive divine messages of my truth. The truth. I hear a voice which gives voice to what was voiceless within me, and the fog of powerlessness dissipates.
Because this is a practice which I began in my childhood, my bed has also become a portal through which I can transcend space and time. There is a simple mantra which I can use nonverbally to initiate this magic while I am crying: “Why?” Immediately upon recitation I am granted access to all the pain and suffering I have memory of, and sometimes more. And to the surface come images, clues, through which I can travel, inhabiting past selves in other places. And when I come out of this reverie, I better understand why I suffer today, now, and what I can do about it.
And this is why I will not stop crying. Why I can never cry too much. Why crying is what makes me stronger.