Tears really freak me out.

Hello! It's Tuesday, and we're about to get another 8 inches of snow dumped on us in addition to the 8 we got this weekend, so I'm just getting settled in for another night (and tomorrow, and tomorrow night...) in.

I was reading this post from MacKensie's blog today about crying, and it made me think about my own emotional responses to things. I can tell you this much: 90% of the time, they are not appropriate for the situation.

Crying

Oh boy. This one has been a doozy my entire life. Some people cry freely and openly, without a care in the world. Some of these people happen to be most of my friends and family. Nowadays, I will ONLY cry in front of Tom, and that's only if he finds me. Usually I hide in the dark under my covers, or cry into whatever dish I happen to be cleaning. (Doing the dishes is one of my favorite crying times.)

And then I get really upset that I'm crying, because I calculate the time I'm wasting. If I cry a lot, and I don't want anyone to know I've been crying, then I'll have to hide out in a corner until my face gets back to normal. And I can't leave whatever place I'm hiding out in until then. I will cry in front of strangers no problem. But people I know? No thanks. I've known people for nearly a decade who have never seen me cry.

I once scheduled in some crying time. I put it on my to-do list. I actually scheduled five minutes to cry in the bathroom. Cried, put some sunglasses on, and headed to work. I think that is the INTJ in me.

Crying People

If you cry to me, I will get severely uncomfortable. And I will, I WILL end up making you cry more.

Case in point: Sophomore year of college, my friend and I were about to leave our Spanish class when the professor said he would give us all of our grades up to that point. Apparently hers was not what she wanted, because as we were leaving class, she proceeded to have a meltdown. (Which was probably a normal crying level for a human, but for me, it was a meltdown.)

She was afraid she would be demoted as a residential hall staff member, her GPA would suffer drastically, her parents would be disappointed, etc.

For you normal people out there, what does this situation call for? If you said "a hug," you are correct. This girl is a hugger, and that's really what she needed. But me being me, I deal with feelings as logically as humanly possible. I have been known to stop, mid-cry, and discuss how it's simply the hormones making me do this, and return to my crying.

I turned to this poor girl and said, totally void of any sympathy, "Don't you have a GPA-based scholarship, too? You should check to see if you'll lose that." She said she had forgotten all about her scholarship, REALLY started to break down, and walked in the direction of the nearest nail salon.

If you cry around me, I will just plow through your feelings to find the answer to your problem. I'm getting better, but I'm still. so. bad. Or in the case of my roommate, who was crying in the bathroom, I'll just pretend it's the shower making those sounds and ignore it entirely.

I promise that my well of empathy runs very, very deep, but the bucket just refuses to bring up any water, so my loved ones never have any proof. (I'm sorry for that metaphor. Really.)

I'm even terrified to try on a wedding dress in a few weeks because I might get teary-eyed, WHILE standing on a pedestal in front of people who are all staring at me. How do those "Say Yes to the Dress" girls do it?! (Yes, I am trying on dresses a year and a half out. It took me a year to choose an engagement ring. This will also take forever.)

So now that I have portrayed myself as a robot-human devoid of the feels, I can assure you, videos of soldiers returning home or sad animals make me cry every time. It's inevitable. I don't even fight it. And if you're a touchy, feely, crying sort of person, I love you. Seriously. I admire all my emotionally expressive friends!

Are you a "cry at the drop of a hat" or a "hide behind my sunglasses and blame it on allergies and onion ninjas" kind of person?