exercising my literacy

Human physiology, lesson #138.

Crying is akin to vomiting.

The urge to do it is the worst feeling in the world. A vicelike grip on your inner core, it infiltrates your every thought. Every breath is a struggle, a deep suction of air to still your fluttering heart. You feel sick. You feel so disgustingly sick that you don't care what people will think anymore, you just want to go ahead and do it, because anything is better than this nauseating sensation deepseated somewhere between your heart and your stomach.

And so you try. My gosh you try.

But alas, modern life has trained us so well to keep things in for etiquette's sake that every inhibitive mechanism has kicked in automatically, efficiently, and far too successfully. So this standoff begins. You are fine and dying all at once. You have two choices - live with the illness and hope it will pass, or force yourself with every ounce of human will to exorcise it, for you know it is the only remedy, the only true catharsis.

If feeling like you want to cry/vomit is the worst thing in the world, then surely trying to cry/vomit is the hardest thing in the world.

But once you have initiated that first drop, it is done. The rest follows effortlessly. You feel a warm tingle flush your face as the nausea subsides like water gurgling down the drain. Exhausted, depleted of every joule of energy, messy and devoured, but feeling so much better.

Although crying/vomiting is a natural thing (in that it is a feature of human function), it must also be an unnatural thing, for the sight of it in another human being invokes an innate and terrible panic in us. Something is wrong!, cry our first instinct. Instantly, our desire is to flee this awkward situation. But it is at times like these that we find true friends. They are the ones who deny their discomfort and stick around, pat your back while you let it out, brush the hair from your face and say soothingly, "There, there". They are the ones who, after the event, look at the mess that you now are, and smile at you, whispering, "Do you feel better now?"

You nod. You do, but you do so much more because they are there with you.

The end.

posted by me. @ 10:52 PM