I cry more than I admit.
Not in a grand, dramatic way, no floor collapsing beneath me, no stormy violins in the background. It’s quieter than that usually, when no one’s looking. Sometimes, in the shower. Sometimes under the covers.
It’s not always because something huge has happened. Sometimes I don’t even know what exactly tipped me over, just a build-up of small things: an offhand comment, an awkward silence, a text that never came.
And before I know it, the lump in my throat turns into tears. I used to be embarrassed by it. Now, I think maybe it’s one of the only honest things I do.
As kids, we didn’t need a reason to cry. Hunger, frustration, boredom, a toy out of reach, we let it out. It was instinct. A built-in release valve. No shame, no second-guessing. But somewhere along the way, we were taught to hold it in. That crying is a sign of immaturity, weakness, or, worst of all , inconvenience.
Especially if you’re sensitive, and I am, you learn to constantly manage your feelings. To monitor your tone, your tears, your reactions. You get good at disguising sadness as sarcasm, and anger as indifference.
You become a pro at saying “it’s fine” when it’s absolutely not.
But, emotions don’t disappear just because you’ve decided they’re inconvenient. They wait.
They find other exits. They turn into irritability, anxiety, or that sudden urge to cancel all your plans and lie very still. And that’s where crying comes in, not as a breakdown but as a reset. A nervous system reboot.
A way of saying, “Something inside me hurts. Let me acknowledge it before it starts leaking into everything else.”
Alain de Botton once wrote that
“we cry when we need someone to witness our despair.”
I think that’s true, but it’s not always about someone else witnessing it. Sometimes, we just need to witness it ourselves. To see our own pain and not minimize it. To say,
“Hey, that really did affect me. That actually mattered.”
The problem is our culture doesn’t leave much room for that. We cry at funerals and breakups, those are allowed.
But what about when your self-worth slowly crumbles under a hundred tiny failures?
Or when you’re so overwhelmed you can’t choose between toothpaste brands at the store? Or when you miss someone who’s still alive but no longer really in your life?
These aren’t headline-worthy heartbreaks, but they still sit heavy on the chest. And when we don’t cry about them, they pile up.
There’s a strange thing that happens when you finally let yourself cry: everything softens. Not just emotionally but physically. The tension in your jaw unclenches. Your breathing evens out. It’s as if your body has been holding a secret on your behalf, and it finally gets to tell the truth.
And truthfully? I feel better after. Not fixed. Not euphoric. Just a bit more human. A bit more in touch with myself. Like I’m no longer pretending I can carry everything without it costing me anything.
I’ve cried after sending texts I shouldn’t have. I’ve cried over songs that felt too familiar, over feeling lonely in rooms full of people. I’ve cried from relief, from guilt, from that weird mix of hope and disappointment that life is so good at serving up.
And the older I get, the more I think: Why did we ever try to unlearn this?
We don’t question sneezing. Or yawning. Or the need to sleep when we’re tired. But crying? That we treat like a malfunction. Like it’s something to suppress until it boils over in ugly ways.
But honestly, we need to cry more. Not for pity, not for drama, just to be real. To stay connected to ourselves. To keep our inner world from calcifying. Because the alternative is walking around emotionally constipated ghosting our friends, and wondering why we feel so empty all the time.
So if the tears come, let them. Don’t rationalize them. Don’t apologize to them. You don’t have to explain your sadness in bullet points. You don’t need a tragic backstory to justify your softness. You just need to feel it. Fully. Honestly. Without turning it into a performance.
Crying doesn’t make you fragile. Pretending you never need to is what actually wears you down.
We need to cry more. Quietly, loudly, privately, messily, however, it happens. Because in a world that’s constantly telling us to “keep it together,” there’s something quietly radical about falling apart, and then picking up the pieces, softer, kinder, more in touch.
And that, I think, is the real strength.
