wept and fasted, wept and prayed

when i was about 8 years old, i cried myself to sleep the night before a 3rd grade social studies test. i could not go to anyone with my fears. not for solace or courage or strength. nobody helped me - least of all my tears. i did not do very well on the test and was down to 7th in class at the end of the year. i realised how futile it was - shedding ugly tears, all that sniffling sticky vulnerbability. for nothing. made me feel small and powerless. and because i was truly small and powerless in that dimlit, unhappy house, i hated that feeling even more. so i did not cry again - for years. in the house where i grew up, any sign of weakness was capitalized upon. nobody held your hand, or kissed a scraped knee (more likely you'd get a whack for having hurt yourself and caused the inconvenience) or gave you a surprise hug - no matter how young you were. they pounced on you with unfathomable joy when u were down. some kind of strange, sick schaden freude against one's own flesh and blood.
with time, i did not feel the need to cry. was i never afraid or sad or disappointed in the years that followed? of course. most of the time. but i devised ways to distract myself out of the need to express my weaknesses - from a cold, petulant need not to give anyone the satisfaction. i had created a whole other wolrd - a whole family of characters entirely in my mind. whenever something happened that tried to push me to the edge, i would switch to this other reality - like switching channels on tv. things occured in that world far more vicious than my own and it was one way for me to distance myself from the truth of what was actually happening.
when i was 15, my grandmother died. i had by that time become such a veteran of stoicism that i was afraid i would not be able to cry for her, esp in front of the gathered masses of unknown faces that emerge when someone dies. i managed -but not without some nasty mindtricks that i played on myself. it left me feeling sick.

...

now i cry everyday. for the times i hadn't.