Have you ever focused on the feeling you get when you cry? Not the emotional release or the pain or emptiness, but the actual, physical feeling? You kind of have to focus. Forget about why you're crying and think about what it is you're experiencing. Usually it feels nice to let your eyes burst with fluid, rather than holding it in, but when you really focus it doesn't feel good at all. It's a headache, sort of. A minor throbbing pain behind your eyes that makes it feel like they are bugging out of your head, about to pop right out of their sockets and fall onto the floor with the salty grossness leaking from them.
Have you ever cried at a really inappropriate time? It's sort of like laughing at a funeral, if anyone actually ever does that, but it's different because people forgive you. Showing pain isn't rude, so they let you be and perhaps try to imagine what it is your going through, or maybe they just sit there awkwardly or even pretend like they don't see.
Yesterday I saw a movie with my friend. We went to the cinema and sat in one of the little theaters with about ten other people and watched The Fault in Our Stars. Now, I know what you're thinking. "Well of course you'd cry watching that movie! It's about two kids with cancer who fall hopelessly in love! The only thing it's missing are a few orphans and some sad stray cats!" Actually, not everyone cries at this movie based on the lovely work by John Green. Some people laugh. But that's not the point I'm trying to make. My friend cried almost the entire time. The first time I rubbed her shoulder. The rest of the time, I let her be. Not because I felt awkward, but because something about the dark theater makes one feel very singular. Like you have your own little pocket of dark to watch bright, big films in and contemplate life. So I let her contemplate and gave myself my own little personal pocket of movie-watching experience. I cried once during this film, and not during any of the sad kids with cancer scenes. It was one of the scenes that was not at all unique to the movie. Rather, it was a scene that basically everyone romantic movie has. Hazel, the main character, walked out from wherever she had been wearing a pretty blue dress. Augustus, the other main character, stopped what he was doing and turned to look at her. You get where this is going. Close-up on boys awestruck face, close-up on girl looking shyly at boy, small silence before boy says, "You look beautiful," or whatever. And I broke. I cried and cried silently to myself. And then I laughed and wiped my eyes bitterly with one of the rough napkins my friend had scavenged from Red Robin earlier when she remembered we would need tissues.
So I guess my response was both acceptable and rude. I cried, which was fine and private and understandable, but then I laughed. I laughed at this simple scene that every love story ever has, accept for my own. And there, in the midst of that dark movie theater where my friend and I and about ten people we didn't know sat watching a movie about death and life and grief and love, I found my own little singular experience to contemplate and my whole world was tipped around and upside-down.
Maybe I was never in love. Maybe I was, but never realized I had fallen out of it due to being blinded by that feeling from the past. Maybe I am not being true to myself, and some time spent alone with a friend I seldom see has made me realize that. I don't quite know where to go from here, and I think that's okay for now. What I do know is that little piece of forever that Hazel talks about during Augustus's eulogy is still waiting for me somewhere, and where I thought I found it is no longer the place I can look for it.
Have you ever cried at a really inappropriate time? It's sort of like laughing at a funeral, if anyone actually ever does that, but it's different because people forgive you. Showing pain isn't rude, so they let you be and perhaps try to imagine what it is your going through, or maybe they just sit there awkwardly or even pretend like they don't see.
Yesterday I saw a movie with my friend. We went to the cinema and sat in one of the little theaters with about ten other people and watched The Fault in Our Stars. Now, I know what you're thinking. "Well of course you'd cry watching that movie! It's about two kids with cancer who fall hopelessly in love! The only thing it's missing are a few orphans and some sad stray cats!" Actually, not everyone cries at this movie based on the lovely work by John Green. Some people laugh. But that's not the point I'm trying to make. My friend cried almost the entire time. The first time I rubbed her shoulder. The rest of the time, I let her be. Not because I felt awkward, but because something about the dark theater makes one feel very singular. Like you have your own little pocket of dark to watch bright, big films in and contemplate life. So I let her contemplate and gave myself my own little personal pocket of movie-watching experience. I cried once during this film, and not during any of the sad kids with cancer scenes. It was one of the scenes that was not at all unique to the movie. Rather, it was a scene that basically everyone romantic movie has. Hazel, the main character, walked out from wherever she had been wearing a pretty blue dress. Augustus, the other main character, stopped what he was doing and turned to look at her. You get where this is going. Close-up on boys awestruck face, close-up on girl looking shyly at boy, small silence before boy says, "You look beautiful," or whatever. And I broke. I cried and cried silently to myself. And then I laughed and wiped my eyes bitterly with one of the rough napkins my friend had scavenged from Red Robin earlier when she remembered we would need tissues.
So I guess my response was both acceptable and rude. I cried, which was fine and private and understandable, but then I laughed. I laughed at this simple scene that every love story ever has, accept for my own. And there, in the midst of that dark movie theater where my friend and I and about ten people we didn't know sat watching a movie about death and life and grief and love, I found my own little singular experience to contemplate and my whole world was tipped around and upside-down.
Maybe I was never in love. Maybe I was, but never realized I had fallen out of it due to being blinded by that feeling from the past. Maybe I am not being true to myself, and some time spent alone with a friend I seldom see has made me realize that. I don't quite know where to go from here, and I think that's okay for now. What I do know is that little piece of forever that Hazel talks about during Augustus's eulogy is still waiting for me somewhere, and where I thought I found it is no longer the place I can look for it.