Fresh Showers of Tears
Tears. I have fought myself for years about tears and shedding them. I always felt like they showed too much emotion and weakness to myself and others. The lack of letting myself cry, even when I started to tear up, I would brush them away and force my emotions back inside my body. The evolution of letting the tears fall came super slowly, from realizing that pushing the tears back inside made the wave of emotions I didn't understand stronger. Letting the tears fall is still hard doesn't matter if I'm in a safe space with someone or on my own I still feel the shame of letting my pain and 'weakness' show. Sometimes it's even worse on my own, as the voices in my head telling me I don't have a good reason to cry and trying to remove me from feeling the pain and being in the moment. The thing is I've felt better after every time I've cried, regardless if my reality has changed or not the tears were a shower of calm. Personally, I find the best is crying in the shower with music on, it somehow has the strongest release of emotion. Tears are hard, I think I learned growing up in a lot of physical pain that no one could take away that tears scared others around me, so I stopped crying and put up a brave face. The problem was I didn't learn a good way to deal with the pain so it turned into a myriad of ways of self-harm. Self-harm doesn't always look the same, my self-harm journey has many twists and turns and I will write about it someday, but for now cry when you are in pain, and when someone around you cries,sit and allow them a safe space to let the self shower of tears fall.