This week, I talk about the complicated nature of crying in public with a trip paragliding. And how maybe we need more than one person to satisfy our emotional needs. I am not talking about polyamory. Though I am not against it, just the idea that maybe you have one person who hugs you the right way, and one person who knows how you like your eggs cooked. And that it might be unrealistic to expect one person to do everything for you. Also, please excuse any typos. I am not always the best at proofreading (understatement).
I have been told, by more than a few people, maybe most people, that they don’t cry. (I am always surprised at how many people actually say this). Much less in public. The first time I noticed that my views on this were seemingly different from others, was in high school when I routinely cried. I could make myself cry by just thinking about something sad. And the world has no shortage of sad things.
From illness, from periods, from break-ups. From all the privileges youth offers, I was lucky enough to have crying be a literal way of asking for help. Nothing to be ashamed about. A way of non-verbally communicating that I was sad. Or in pain. This is a luxury, I know. But it didn’t feel like it at the time. It felt somehow normal. I watched my mother cry. I don’t know if I have seen my father cry. But definitely my sister and both my grandparents come to think of it. Did you watch your family members cry when you were growing up?
Sometimes I question if I used my advantages as a young white woman in tears to garner sympathy and attention from others? This is not an essay about that. However, I felt like it is worth acknowledging in this moment. I cried when a police officer pulled me over, saying that I was just trying to get to my French tutor on time. I was not fearing for my life, but more so just trying to avoid paying a ticket. I had no remorse for speeding at the time. I did have remorse for getting caught.
Sobbing I begged him to not give me a ticket. That I would never speed again. And he said, “I would give you a ticket. But I am out of papers at this moment. But if I ever catch you again, I will surely give you a ticket.”
I feel like I have been able to be seen as a virtuous person only because of my good fortune.
I am trying to not conflate the two but it is hard.
For my father’s 70th birthday, I got us tandem paragliding flights. This was not something I would ever do on my own. My father, who moved in with us during the pandemic, was an avid skydiver and hang-glider. I remember his equipment in the garage growing up taking up space and being annoyed that I couldn’t get a new bike. I remember lying to a friend’s parents when I was in second grade that I had actually been skydiving with my dad. I wonder if they believed me? Looking back I can pathologize that I wanted to be like my father, and making this statement somehow painted me in his shadow.
Since moving to the Bay, he has longed to hang-glide again. Making trips to Fort Funston to gaze longingly at the humans soaring through the air. He wanted to be a pilot. He wanted to be a bird. He has dreams he can fly. No one offers tandem hang-gliding flights anymore, or that I could find, so I went with paragliding (to his disappointment but whatever).
He got into skydiving by chance. I always wonder why people do extreme things. A woman in early college broke up with my father. She happened to be into skydiving. That’s how this whole thing started. It’s weird how heartbreak can change your life in so many ways.
Over the week leading up to our tandem paragliding session, I had been really weepy. I thought for a moment I might be pregnant. Which I am not. Crying at the idea of being pregnant and crying at the idea that I am not. The state of the world seems increasingly dire and personal agency nonexistent. I cried alone. I hid it. In the car. Before bed. Any moment alone could be used. As a release of sorts. Unlike when I was young.
I decided recently that I didn’t want to infect anyone with my sadness. I didn’t want to burden Josh. I didn’t want to bring my co-workers down. I didn’t have any friends to call (I know that I do. I have really great friends. But I have not been there for them so I felt shitty dumping). I didn’t want my mother to worry. I reached out to my sister, but it was never the right time. I responded to emails with tears falling, relying on Grammarly to help keep the tone upbeat. Have you used this function? It is fascinating to think about how an algorithm can judge the complexity of human emotion and tone from the combination of a few words. How I can read an email and sit for hours ruminating over the intentions of the sender.
In graduate school, I had a professor who always wore sunglasses. Her name is Sharon Grace. She is brilliant. The only time I ever saw her eyes was when we would dim the lights for videos. When asked why she always wore sunglasses indoors, she simply said she was always tired and she didn’t want to make anyone else tired. This is a woman who fed all her classes. Sharon always brought food to lecture. Arguing that students couldn’t focus if they were hungry. The conversation was better after food. Could you imagine a teacher doing this for every class? It was always the same thing, chips, hummus, Cuties, and tabbouleh (Greek style). From Whole Foods. This would often function as a meal for me. I was always grateful for Sharon. But she was the first person I met who was actively open about how she tried her best not to infect other people with her tired eyes.
As I age I feel a weird pressure to just keep the tears in. I know I would be accepted by the kind people around me if I cried. I just somehow don’t want them to feel it. To take on my pain. Like the world already has enough pain.
The drive to paragliding was surreal. The whole experience was surreal. We drove from Oakland to Pacifica, a city along the coast of California that I had never been to. But everyone, given the chance should go to. My father has an obsession with the Impossible Burger at Burger King. He decided on the way that we make a detour to get it. I obliged. It is interesting that out of everything he could get for lunch on his day, he would insist on an Impossible Burger with a chocolate shake which he tried and then immediately regretted getting.
We walked halfway up the seaside cliff, the ice plants in full bloom, the sun shining. Waves rolling. I met my guide. His name was David. He was learning English. He was young. Without much warning, my life in this stranger’s hands, we strapped ourselves together and ran off the side of a cliff. Apparently, my father made a comment after we left about how there should have been more checking of the “rigs” and potentially rubbed the other paraglider the wrong way.
I don’t know if it was the height, or the beauty of it all, or the cold, or whatever, but I cried. Not sobbing cry. But a silent cry. Strapped to this attractive stranger. I tried to make small talk. The only thing that came to mind was asking them if anyone had ever vomited on him in the air? But I resisted as I felt my stomach churn. I didn’t want to know. And I am trying to learn how to NOT ask questions when I know I will not like the answers.
We were both facing outwards. So we couldn’t look at each other. Which was for the best. I imagined what it would feel like to fall. To have our bodies embrace the sea. Or the side of the mountain. What a privilege to feel safe and terrified at the same time. There was a part of me, a small part of me, that felt ok if this was the end. And I thought about how if this was to be the end, I was somehow grateful to be with this stranger. Out of all the strangers. Grateful our fates intertwined.
“David, do people ever confess things to you while you are in the air?” He returned with, “What? I don’t understand.” I dropped it. And just cried while trying not to look down. I thought for a moment about telling him why I was crying. But decided that maybe it was best if he just assumed that it was from the altitude or something.
If you feel like crying, close your eyes and imagine I am there, holding you. This is a weird thing to say because I am not actually there holding you. But I just tried it. I imagined you holding me (in my imagination you look and smell like my mother) who will hold me. For as long as I need her to. Accept my tears and love them.
Sometimes I think it is wrong to ask this of others. I think this because, with my partner, there is never just a time to hold each other. There is always a fear that I am interfering with their agenda. Like my tears would be met with, “Carissa, I was planning on mowing the lawn today.” With my mother, it is her agenda to support me. I am forever grateful for that.
I deeply love both of these people and the types of support they offer are different. But it does turn out that I need more than one person to support my emotional needs - including strangers.
TWO ART PROJECTS ABOUT CRYING THAT I LOVE:
Crying Glasses
1995
On public transport in Hamburg, Berlin, Rostock, London and Guildford
Photo Credit: Christina Lamb
Over a year I wore the crying glasses while travelling on public transport in all the cities I visited. The glasses functioned using a pump system which, hidden inside my jacket allowed me to pump water up out of the glasses and produced a trickle of tears down my cheeks. The glasses were conceived as a tool to enable the representation of feelings in public spaces. Over the months of wearing the glasses they became an external mechanism which enabled the manifestation of internal and unidentifiable emotions.
3-second memory machine, performance, 2009. By Kit Yi Wong
I wore a snorkel mask, mixing my own tears with the water in which the fish swam.
ONE SONG:
Lykke Li
ONE POET:
This week, I’m talking with Joe Keohane on his book The Power of Strangers: The Benefits of Connecting in a Suspicious World.
Joe is a veteran journalist who has worked as an editor at Medium, Esquire, Entrepreneur, and Hemispheres. His writing has appeared in New York magazine, The Boston Globe, The New Yorker, Wired, Boston magazine, and The New Republic.
This book called out to me in a way I can’t quite explain. It seems almost uncanny that while I am grappling with the complexities and implications of crying in front of strangers, that there is a book that can actually help me understand the social and psychological benefits of interacting with said strangers (maybe without the crying?). Some could say it’s fate, but I don’t know if I really believe in fate.
We have a couple copies to giveaway to our US-based subscribers! Comment here with a recent interaction you’ve had with a stranger (good or bad):
I have a cry list I've been keeping since July 2020. Everytime I cry, I write down the date and the reason why. It's called Actual Tears or it Doesn't Count because I have to have real tears flowing to make the list. It's really interesting to see patterns or themes of what makes me cry and to see how often I cry (around 42 times per year). It also acts as a weird consolation prize: after crying at least I get to add it to the list.
I’m reading this in the Amsterdam airport while trying to stay small and out of the way as people rush by my gate. But I’m beside a rolling cabinet that I didn’t know rolled until I leaned against it. It only pushed into the wall. Nobody probably even noticed. I still felt silly. About 10 minutes later, a man leaned against the cabinet and pushed it into me. He said something about thinking it was sturdier. English is not his first language, but we laughed together anyway. I told him I just did the same thing. And we laughed a little more. I didn’t feel as silly. Or as alone. Even on 30 minutes of sleep, I don’t feel like crying in public right now, but we’ll see how the day goes...loved this one so much, Carissa.