Posts tagged with "crying"

Multitasking Emotions

Left screen, I’m going over the bach­e­lor par­ty footage. We’re recov­er­ing from a night of drink­ing over bacon and eggs in a high-cor­ner wide-angle shot. Right screen, I’m talk­ing to Aaron on Messenger.

Aaron: bro, you know I love you
Aaron: like for real
Aaron: no shit
Jeff: thanks man, i love you too
Aaron: no ‘you’re my bro’ shit
Aaron: the real deal

“No ‘You’re my bro’ shit”, he says. Bro. The word we some­times use to remind each oth­er that we’re fam­i­ly. Nothing emas­cu­lates some like the “l” word, but we’re passed that.

“you know I love you”. He was first to say it this time, and it cat­alyzes the tears down my face.

The video’s still play­ing. In it we’re ebul­lient, frat­er­niz­ing, and I can’t help but laugh along too.

I remem­ber anoth­er time, about three years ago, when I broke down after deal­ing with my mom and her incor­ri­gi­ble ways. I rolled a joint and smoked it as soon as I got off the phone. As the weed went to my brain, my mood evened out. I was numb to the pain but the tears did­n’t stop, like a phys­i­cal reflex.

What a strange feel­ing it was to be cry­ing and laugh­ing or stoned at the same time.

Life is the same way. It’s nev­er black and white, and there’s no absolute right or wrong. There are grey areas, points of pas­sion between plea­sure and pain.

Even cry­ing from joy is an enig­mat­ic micro­cosm of such an idea. I remem­ber doing so only one oth­er time, at the end of grade 7, dur­ing the final audi­tions for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Out of 10 schools, we were com­pet­ing to spend the sum­mer singing on stage with Donny Osmond. When they announced the name of our school we jumped out of our seats in cheer, but I could feel my face gri­mace from the emo­tion, tears fill­ing up my eyes. It’s as if you’re over­tak­en by sad­ness that you’ll nev­er feel as hap­py again.

Like yin and yang, one does­n’t exist with­out the oth­er, and often they exist at once.

A Place To Stay

Thumbnail: Scratch sand 1

Thumbnail: Scratch sand 2

Gua sha, or sand scratch­ing, he calls it.

I’m already sob­bing. The cul­mi­na­tion of anoth­er week of stress and lack of sleep. One dis­ap­point­ment after anoth­er.

With the bowl of a porce­lain Chinese soup spoon, he scrapes the mus­cles along the back of my neck.

This caus­es rup­ture of the small sub-der­mal cap­il­lar­ies (petechia) and may result in sub-cuta­neous bruis­ing (ecchy­mo­sis).

According to Chinese med­ical prac­ti­tion­ers, the inter­nal tox­ins in the blood are released and cir­cu­la­tion is improved.

Before con­tin­u­ing down my shoul­ders, he rubs on some Vic’s VapoRub. It lubri­cates the process, cools the skin to ease the burn­ing dis­com­fort, a mix of east­ern and west­ern tech­niques. The patch he rubs turns a mud­dy mix of red and gar­net, and from this he tells me that I’m work­ing too hard. I have to look after myself bet­ter. Relax every day. Take an hour to exer­cise or walk. The first step to a healthy mind is a healthy body. The colour indi­cates that I have a lot of tox­ins built up in my body.

The dark­er it is, the more it’s sup­posed to hurt, but I feel noth­ing.

I take a sip from the mug that he hands me, full of pale yel­low liq­uid. It burns going down. Flavourless, but maybe that’s just the con­ges­tion.

“It’s spicy”, I mum­ble, no longer speak­ing Chinese. It’s too much on my mind. I need to express myself with­out lim­i­ta­tions.

“It’s just gin­ger-water. If you can’t take it, you can add some sug­ar.”

I don’t reply. The unas­sum­ing con­som­mé rais­es the inter­nal tem­per­a­ture, killing the sick air. To quell the spasms in my chest, I take slow­er, deep­er breaths. It does­n’t work.

“I admire you, uncle. One day I hope to be a father like you.”

He breathes a short but heavy sigh. I can tell that these words pain him more than any­thing else I’ve said. He tells me, in Chinese, “Uncle does­n’t make a lot of mon­ey. I make sure I spend a lot of time at home”.

“I like you, uncle. I hope that no mat­ter what hap­pens, we can still be friends.”

“No mat­ter what hap­pens, you’ll always have a place to stay with us in Hong Kong.”

Broke Down At Work Today

I haven’t cried in a while, and I think it was just build­ing up, which would explain why I felt so much bet­ter after­ward.

I just kept work­ing. One can be sad, stressed, wor­ried, even to the point of tears, and car­ry on with the rest of dai­ly life. Crying is just a phys­i­cal reflex of a state-of-mind.

Two peo­ple may have noticed, but nei­ther of them said any­thing.

Thank god I don’t have to deal with the bull­shit of hid­ing this from some­one.

Trailer Park Awesome

I was plan­ning on writ­ing some­thing else, but had the sug­gen urge to con­fess that I was watch­ing Trailer Park Boys with four oth­er guys yes­ter­day and it was the Christmas spe­cial where Jono is all prep­py and Randy is giv­ing hand­jobs for cheese­burg­ers before he becomes assis­tant super­in­ten­dent, when Bubbles is sit­ting with his present in his lap giv­en to him by his par­ents before they left him when he was young, and Ricky tells him to open it because they’re his fam­i­ly, so I start­ed to cry but no one noticed, and I can’t stop think­ing about how fuck­ing stu­pid it is, and I won­der if any­one ever believes me or thinks I’m doing it for atten­tion or what­ev­er because it makes no fuck­ing sense to me.

Have I Slept?

I think my alarm woke me up this morn­ing.

In uni­ver­si­ty I would dream of dif­fer­en­tial equa­tions, log­ic gates, algo­rith­mic proofs, any­thing that I crammed in my head the night before. If I did­n’t dream it, I was­n’t ready. Everything was ster­ile, unemo­tion­al. I would­n’t be watch­ing myself write an exam, I’d be writ­ing it. My con­scious thoughts would take over my sub­con­scious mind.

This is dif­fer­ent. All day I think. At night, I try to sleep but can’t, and all I do is start to think again. Then, some­how, my alarm wakes me up. Have I slept? Was I actu­al­ly think­ing, or just dream­ing about it? My jaw is sore. I’m clench­ing my teeth. When did I start? Was it before or after I got in bed? My eyes are sealed shut again. Have I been cry­ing? Did I cry in my uncon­scious, or did I do it con­scious­ly and for­get?