dry eyed heathen

meditations on tears

cw: addiction, death, emotional abuse, mention of suicide, mention of tenderqueers

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in accordance with an ancient tradition of the tenderqueer lineage, how often you cry is a marker of virtuousness. cry to sad animal videos - you’re an entry level empath. cry in public - a tenderqueer right of passage. cry on a crowded train during rush hour - tq status of sainthood. i think too much about my relationship to crying, a thing that had never even crossed my mind before i became enmeshed in queer community where feeling and emotions are lauded. on average, i cry approximately once a year, which i think marks me the official antichrist. what does it mean that i don’t cry very often? i don’t experience extreme emotions. is my subconscious blocked? i tried reiki and breathwork and yoga and so far none have opened the floodgates.

sculpture by francisco romero zafra

when i was twenty years old my mother died. the part of this story that i usually leave out because it makes me seem monstrous is that i didn’t cry. she had been struggling with alcoholism and depression for as long as i can remember. one time in high school i found her passed out in a pile of pills and the er doctor called it a diabetic coma, the first of many. my memory of this time in my life is especially bad, but know that it was horrible and painful and absolutely heartbreaking to watch. when i got the news of her death, i was working at my college internship. my boss overheard my phone call and she must have interpreted my lack of tears and calm demeanor to mean that i was in shock. she insisted that i take off and head back to my hometown. i don’t remember exactly what i said to her, but i do remember that i went right back to work. and i didn’t go back “home” for at least a few days. she must have had family that wasn’t difficult, i thought. she must not have grown up preparing for a day just like this.

i accept the fact that i didn’t cry at my mother’s funeral makes me a monster. the nuance isn’t important. the fact that she almost killed herself and others several times before isn’t important. the fact that she wanted to die isn’t important. a few years after her death, because she was haunting me (a story for another time), i was convinced to employ the expert help of a medium. as the medium opened the room to spirits, several of my dead relatives, invisible to me, immediately entered. she first described my grandfathers in detail, then she moved on to a woman who must have died young. before i could tell her anything about my mother she told me what she smelled like - alcohol. she told me what she looked like - she had a storm cloud over her head. she told the medium that she was sorry she couldn’t be the mother that i deserved, and that she was proud of me. she said to tell my brother to stop biting his nails. as soon as the 45 minute reading was over, and for several hours after, i sobbed.

human tears contain over 1500 different proteins. they are similar in composition to saliva, but somehow taste a lot better. tears are my second favorite bodily fluid after blood. spitting is really popular right now amongst the perverts, but i much prefer someone to cry in my mouth. one of my partners has a spot on her upper back that, when whipped, causes her to cry instantly. i love licking her salty wet face. whether i caused the tears (consensually) or not, i wonder if my love of this salty liquid has anything to do with my inability to cry? a backfilling of sorts. is it some subconscious desire for raw, feral emotions?

i didn’t develop shame around my dry eyes until i dated someone who treated tears as virtue signaling. i was still very young and didn’t quite understand that i was allowed to feel, a relic of my childhood. they had me convinced i was a sociopath because my emotional intensity was not close to a level that matched theirs. one thing i learned from that relationship is that google can’t teach you “how to have more feelings.” 

while we were together, they were diagnosed with a life threatening illness and i didn’t cry. i was scared, but my lack of tears were utilitarian. this is what i know how to do - show up, take care of you, be the strong femme girlfriend, hold your hand at the doctor, kiss your forehead after surgery, assure you it will all be ok. i listened to them talk about their feelings and held their pain and didn’t once make it about me. i made polite excuses - we don’t show emotions in the same way, i’m used to living in survival mode. what i meant to say was that i grew up with a banshee circling my house, and this proximity to death is comfortable. long after we broke up, i learned from one of their friends at the time that they said my lack of emotion meant that i didn’t really care about them.

in 2014 designer keita suzuki created a bean-bag like vinyl chair filled with 64 liters of water to represent the amount of tears the average person cries in a lifetime. i imagine suzuki capturing each of his own tears in a jar for an extended period of time to arrive at this estimation. i wonder if this number accounted for outliers like me and other dry-eyed heathens throwing off the mean. i fantasize about sending one of these tear filled chairs to my ex signed from the antichrist. 

it is ironic that my next partner is best remembered for giving me orgasms that made me cry. specifically it was some magic trick of double penetration that made me feel like stardust. montages of singing angels would swirl around my head as tears streamed down my face. i wonder what tender queers would think about this. are these seen as valid tears of redemption for my callous sins? or is my ability to only cry tears of sexual ecstasy more proof of my transgressions? i like to tell people that the orgasms kept me around, which is to hide my shame of dating someone for so long who i knew was a pathological liar. this was before i had solid boundaries, before i learned that being alone is better than being with someone who treats you badly. but she made me feel good, she cooked me dinner and took me on cute dates, she just never ever let me ask any questions. two way conversations were seen as me employing interrogation tactics trying to poke holes in her fake life. so i stopped. she spewed falsities while i sat quietly.

for the few years we were together i desperately wanted her to tell me who she really was. i was perhaps so obsessed that i didn’t realize all the ways she was already telling me. where other people might have left, i saw opportunities for intimacy. if she could just come clean we would be perfect together! what i didn’t quite realize is that being lied to about the foundations of someone’s identity for years is completely destabilizing. it’s changed my relationship to trust in ways i have yet to grapple with. controlling a narrative of yourself by completely making it up is manipulation at its core. she finally threw me the truth bone almost a year after we broke up. when a story unraveled that was even less believable than the lies i knew she had laid her truth at my feet. it was layers of pain that made her this way and when she showed me who she really was i cried and cried. we both did. 

there are many supposed health benefits of crying. emotional tears contain toxins and stress hormones that are good to flush from your system, and long term crying releases oxytocin and endorphins that give you a sense of calm during emotional distress. it sounds to me like tears are wonderful holistic medicine, the cry babies might be on to something. i can usually remember the last time i cried after a few minutes of thinking about it. 1. christmas eve. i spoke to my brother for the first time after he got sober. i learned that he was paralyzed from a stroke he had during an overdose. 2. june. my heart was broken. 3. i can’t remember. my tear research has uncovered that we produce less tears as we get older, but i’m finding that for me the opposite is true.