I do not consider myself to be a very emotional person, in the sense that emotions do not affect me in most cases. I am normally calm, even in situations of stress, and I do like to think of myself as a rock against the fierce sea of life, strong and rooted in the face of the constant barrage of waves.

From that to reality there are a few gaps, but we can talk about that on another occasion.

What I want to talk about today is crying, as I see there is some difference between how I see it and how other people do. You get this feeling, from watching anything really, that crying is always, or almost so, out of sadness. Understandable, I guess, but I cannot really remember one single time in which I have cried because I was sad.

In fact, the very concept of crying because I am sad feels a bit foreign to me. Sadness, for me, is crushing nothingness. A void, deep in the chest, an overcast world without a single drop of rain, a pressuring weight on my back that I can sometimes ignore but that crushes me back with more strength the moment I remember about it. Sadness is not an emotion, but the void left when happiness is missing, just as cold is the absence of heat.

Crying feels like the other end of the scale, coming up when emotions are too strong to be nicely kept inside. I cry out of happiness, of relief, after watching a beautiful movie or hearing some of my favorite songs. What’s more, crying feels good. It releases all those feelings in beautiful explosion that leaves me content and in peace. When I feel out of touch, or with some of that void of depression I mentioned above, watching some of my favorite movies or reading a book or watching old pictures or anything else that helps me wash the void away always helps immensely.

I have had nothing but good experiences with crying, and I can tell that something is good when it brings some tears to my eyes. In that sense, I can hardly relate with these depictions of crying out of loss, or sadness. I just doesn’t come to me.

Maybe I am just the odd one out. Maybe I have always been. Who cares, as long as I am left to cry in peace.