No Lotus, No Mud

"if you're not crying, you're not living" and the bittersweetness of love 💧

At baseline, I’m a tearful person. I cry easily. Not from hurt feelings, but from what I’ve pathologized as the bittersweetness of love, which, wouldn’t you know, is encumbered by so. much. grief!

Heck, even in my wedding vows I trembled my way through themes of love and loss. On my wedding day, as I was blubbering, I was already thinking about the end.

When I think about what you mean to me, I can't help but cry. Happy tears, of course. And, I think there's also a bittersweetness that's felt in the love we share, because holy hell, how raw is it to love someone so much? I so wish we could stretch these bodies, these minds into infinite, because a lifetime will never, ever, ever feel like enough.

Wedding Vows for Meeks by me, September 3rd, 2023

Me, in true form, struck by the bittersweetness of love, crying on my wedding day

Here’s a non-exhaustive list of moments and thoughts that have made me cry in the last week or so:

1. My beloved grandmother is 90. She’s lost nearly everyone she’s ever loved, aside from her 5 children and 5 grandchildren. Her 2 brothers, Peter and Bill, her sister Helen this last year, my grandpa, her husband, Keith, her mom, her dad. The thought comes to me, the cost of a life full of love is grief.

2. Holding my husband’s leg as he snuggles into the neck of his sick father. This is so unfair, this is so unfair repeats in my mind like a metronome.

3. While watching The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse. I cried through the entire 34-minute animated film, but one line that really got me: life is difficult, but you are loved. I can hardly believe it, life is difficult and I am loved!

4. Thirstily flipping through Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed, desperate for some wisdom to squelch my neuroses. I was struck by the chapter titled, The Obliterated Place, where Living Dead Dad writes in via a list asking how to be human again. It is impossible for you to go on as you were before, so you must go on as you never have.

5. Seeing my mom cry on Facetime as she tells me she wants to be there for me more as an adult.

6. Snuggling my husband on a Sunday, as he prepares to return to work after being unemployed for some time. I cried because I was going to miss him. I cried because I wondered if we made the most of the time off together. I cried because I wondered if we’d ever have as much time off, together, again.

7. While writing this list…

A Rose with No Thorns but with Sharp Teeth by Annie Russell

My girlfriends and I have a saying, “if you’re not crying, you’re not living,” and I’ve come to believe it to be true. To cry is to be touched, to be impacted by life. Through love and loss, and every speck that lies between the continuum of good, bad, and painful.

We arose to this conclusion after one of us asked, “how often do you cry?”

There was a variety of responses, ranging from near daily to a couple times a month.

Granted, we’re all deeply reflective women. When we first met, we bonded over our sadistic delight of shadow work and the joy of trudging up childhood pain. But when the discrepancy of tears was made clear, we tried to make sense of which salt camp was most healthy. Of course, the “no tears, ever” camp was out. Through years of self-help we knew to never cry was emotional avoidance. Repressed tears were poison to the body, after all.

The unofficial Cry Baby Continuum, ranging from ‘never cries’ to ‘cries non-stop.’

But, was I emotionally unhinged because I cried 3-4x a week? A ball of shame swelled in my throat as we took a contemplative pause.

Eventually, a general consensus was found: the more tears, the more feeling, and the more feeling, the more life. And in that moment, “if you’re not crying, you’re not living” was born.

At times, I still question if I’m emotionally unearthed through the sheer volume of salt and water my eyeballs produce each week. Yet, I’ll be the first to say, all tears are not created equal. For example, the tears shed during my self-loathing, judgment spirals are not the same tears cried at a wedding. AEDP, a therapeutic model I profusely adore, goes so far as to distinguish adaptive tears from maladaptive tears: adaptive tears help access our authentic experience, maladaptive tears block it.

Since my father-in-law’s diagnosis, my tear production has only multiplied. I cry, sometimes 3-4x a day, wrapping my arms around my husband’s head, combing my fingers through his long hair, cooing, I know, I know. It’s so unfair, it’s so unfair.

These are adaptive tears. Tears that make perfect sense given the present circumstance. Tears I wouldn’t have any other way; as painful as those snot-filled moments are, they are in direct compliance with life.

In those tearful moments, I am open. I am open to life and it’s cruel demonstration of duality. No mud, no lotus. Or in the case of grief, no lotus, no mud.

While I would change the circumstances that have brought us here in a heartbeat, I can’t help but think, I wish we would always live this way—hearts square with the reality we all face, a contemplation many of us are anesthetized to, one day we will all die. Like a springboard, this one certainty of life has the confluence to to create great richness and meaning. Meaning that is up to each of us to define for ourselves.

As my tender-hearted mind attempts to hold the ephemeral nature of life, each tear becomes a doorway into the painful perfection of a moment. I am willing, I am open. How grateful am I to die, if it means for a moment, I am to live.

Xx,

T