God Painted Me with Tears in My Eyes

I am one of those people. The ones that are constantly crying; pain, joy, sorrow, happiness, it doesn’t really seem to matter. Emotion = overflowing tear ducts. Now, there is one advantage, given sufficient motivation I can force myself to cry on cue. Great for acting, or getting out of the odd speeding ticket.

But, mostly there are the downsides to this quirk. I cannot stop it. Literally, if I try to keep from crying I get angry at myself and frustrated, which makes me cry more. If anyone calls attention to the fact I’m leaking saline, heaven forbid, I can only cry harder. So hard, in fact, that I cannot speak, or really breath at all except for short painful gasps. Not to mention the migraines I’ve gotten from it.

I’ll be the first to admit, since I can call them up, I’ll use tears to my advantage when I can. It’s particularly effective against guys of any stripe, brothers, father, boyfriend, managers. Women are tougher nuts to crack, but someone has to keep me in check. One time, I broke down sobbing when my parents were getting on to me for voting for Obama. It was Election Day, and my first presidential election I was able to vote in. I was not ready to be harassed (again, I’ve got some interesting coworkers) so I just cried at them and the subject was over.

One time I even saved my characters life in a live action role playing event by crying. I was being harassed by some of the meaner high-level characters because I’d been spotted holding something that did not belong to me. I was lying as I told them a man with a beard had handed it to me and walked off. But as my character I was terrified, I took that fear as my own and started crying and they let me go. It was kind of fun, actually. Then I had to wait an hour for the slow silent tears to finally stop enough for me to go have fun and eat at the feast. (As a side note, Roleplayers can make some AMAZING food.).

Like I said, though, even with the upside there is a downside. It’s worse when it comes to times I don’t want to cry or know I shouldn’t be crying.

Perhaps there is a flaw somewhere in the ‘conflict’ center of my brain; but any kind of conflict, even so much as my manager just telling me to amend how I am doing something, and I’ll get the urge to cry. It’s like a defense mechanism. It can be a pain, though. I have trouble talking to anyone I see as my superior.

One time, my manager stalked up to me while I was working in drive-thru and began yelling at me for something I knew I’d not done(and later found out who had done it, she was never reprimanded). I cried, naturally. It was so close to the end of my shift that I left the store crying. That’s not unjustified, I think, but later that night I ran into the owner of my store. He said his son had told him I’d left crying and he was apologizing to me for my manager’s behavior and talking about what a good employee I am and how he didn’t want to lose me over this. I could not stop crying. He terrified me. And he was being so nice.

I can tell you I wanted to cauterize my tear ducts shut.

And this is something that happens weekly if not daily in my life.

Last week my boyfriend made a joke about him being single. I was hyperventilating by the time we got to where we’d been driving to in the car. I KNEW he was just joking. I know how much I mean to him. And we’re at a stage (eight months on the 24^th) that we should be able to joke, even about that. It took another half hour for me to calm down enough for us to go inside and eat.

I’m more concerned with how unfair it is to him that I do this. It does make me feel like I’m some sort of damaged goods but he’d hear none of that. We just don’t know how to prevent it. And there is no way to stop it when it’s in motion.

If you wonderful people in Gather land know any tips or tricks I would be so grateful to hear them.