Overflow

When a man is full, what can he do?

Burst.

—Zorba, the Greek

Or in my case, over­flow.

I start­ed cry­ing in class. Thankfully, no one noticed. People can get awk­ward around a crier. Unfortunately, sup­press­ing a good cry is as unsat­is­fy­ing as sti­fling a sneeze.

A lot of peo­ple hav­ing been say­ing the wrong things to me late­ly. On top of that, the abun­dance of inter­ac­tion I have with peo­ple — a side-effect of my projects — is leav­ing me drained and over­stim­u­lat­ed.

Sometimes I won­der if it’s in my nature to be emo­tion­al. That try­ing to change this is like try­ing to teach a bird not to sing.

I don’t even have time to deal with this. I have to put it all aside, because there are more impor­tant things to think about right now.

At the bus stop, I real­ized that I have a ten­den­cy to brood. I don’t lis­ten to hap­py songs to get me out of the mood. It’s all minor keys and lemon peels, so I can help it run its course.

It’s been a rough week.

Sometimes, a part of myself spills out.

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  1. “Sometimes I won­der if it’s in my nature to be emo­tion­al. That try­ing to change this is like try­ing to teach a bird not to sing.”

    I would have to say that being emo­tion­al is every­one’s nat­ur­al state and that soci­ety attempts to supress it, espe­cial­ly in men. There’s noth­ing wrong with it so why change it?

  2. Many peo­ple sup­press a cry because they don’t want to get the peo­ple around them feel awk­ward.

    Happiness, sad­ness, or stress won’t make me cry. My eyes well up only when I lis­ten to a great speech, or a great piece of music, I don’t know if these are what you’d call over­stim­u­la­tions.

  3. @Tiana — You’re total­ly right. I think with men it’s as taboo as being per­ceived as homo­sex­u­al, like it emas­cu­lates them or some­thing. It makes me think that these burly, mas­cu­line men are just inse­cure, anoth­er rea­son why they feel the need to dri­ve fast, keep their phys­i­cal dis­tance with oth­er men, and don’t back down in argu­ments.

    @Uncle Joe — I held back because I knew that some peo­ple would have inter­pret­ed me cry­ing the incor­rect­ly. Sometimes, peo­ple just don’t under­stand.

    Music can eas­i­ly make me cry, but that’s nev­er hap­pened with a speech. Perhaps my expe­ri­ence is lim­it­ed; I’d love to hear one that was so mov­ing. I would­n’t con­sid­er these over­stim­u­la­tions. By over­stim­u­lat­ed, I meant that felt very raw, like my skin had been rubbed with sand­pa­per from all my inter­ac­tion, and the slight­est touch would be too much. Only in a men­tal way.

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