Tears spring eternal

Last night, J mentioned having a massage and I started crying. I received a kind email from a friend and started crying. I walked into work and started crying. The tears are the clear and clean kind that flow easily and without obvious provocation. They aren’t accompanied by sobs or sounds or preceded by any particular thought. They just come. As much as they worry me, they are also a relief, a release. They remind me of the tears I shed after my father died. Righteous, innocent and somehow appropriate.

But, these feel like more than grief. As a die hard advocate of being conscious and self-aware, I am uncomfortable not understanding either the exact source or the lessons behind my current bleakness. I am usually good at rising above the fray and gleaning insights but not this time. Joy seems far off. My mouth feels oddly comfortable in a downward cast. The oh-so-scary word ‘depression’ is fitting. Luckily, I take comfort in my knowledge, gleaned from graduate school and the DSM-V, that this is the situational variety, not the chronic.

I am also not a fool. I know my surgery, and the perpetual discomfort and malformation, is the headwaters of my current state of mind. The tears and waves of loss flow from that source but why and where are the streams headed? Intellectually, I understand that my surgery was significant. Kind hearted people, with their brows sympathetically furrowed, reassure me, “Of course you are having feeling, your body has just been assaulted.” I understand that but there is more to this. Mine are not tears of relief or grief or pain. They are messages of something more important that I can’t yet grasp. Or, maybe I’m full of shit and I’m searching for a deeper significance because that would make all this worth it.

This blog entry will not end with any great epiphany or wisdom. This morning I feel fresh out. This morning I just feel tired and confused. I want this all to be for something bigger than myself. I want it to lead to something worthwhile. I believe all things are for good and I look forward to the day that that good is revealed. I welcome the day I can look back on this and feel the gratitude. This morning I say that I am grateful but the words are more a request than a claiming. The words are more faith than felt. This morning, I’m not grateful but I know one day I will be. I hope that day comes soon.