It doesn’t matter why you cry. It doesn’t matter if your heart is broken or battered or blue, or if it seems to be missing all together. It doesn’t matter if you are scared or anxious or shy — perhaps threatened by the unknown, or the darkness, or the creatures awake in the night. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been misunderstood, misguided, misrepresented, or just crowned Miss America. It doesn’t matter if you are witnessing beauty unlike any you’ve ever seen before or injustice unlike any that could be imagined. It doesn’t matter if you’ve lost your best friend or the actor in the commercial has lost his best dog. It doesn’t matter if you are laughing until you can’t breathe, or if your joy is so boundless that its only way out is through your eyes. It doesn’t matter why.
If you feel like crying, cry. And do it well. Ignore them when they hush you. When they tell you: “don’t.” They have no idea what they’re saying. As if you should quash your beautiful emotions. As if you should feel less alive. As if you should feel less.
No. You cry. You go. There is no shame. This is life.
“If you’ve never eaten while crying you don’t know what life tastes like.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe