Very quickly before…whatever this is. I am never going to charge for my substack. I don’t write enough to justify that, and a lot of the writing I do in here is just selfish naval gazing anyway. But I am, at the moment, not employed full-time and so if you like these occasional missives and feel like contributing, that would be awesome. If not, that’s fine. Thanks.
I think I've always cut a figure as a “crying guy.” I mean, if you ever heard me on the radio, I hold everything pretty close to the surface. My joy, my rage, my disappointment, they’re barely subcutaneous. I may not always like them but I’m draped in them and I’ve just come to accept that it might freak people out or turn them off. Once I’ve had a thought, it’s already en route to my mouth.
Surprisingly, however, I have not, historically, been a crier. I can count on one hand the number of times I cried from 2005 - 2015 on one hand. The only time that comes to mind is when a stranger gifted me a right hook on my morning commute (no, I don’t know why, no I don’t know who he was, no, no one riding the train with me seemed to care. I exited the train, spent the afternoon at the hospital, and watch the Aliens director’s cut).
These days, though - I can feel tears behind even the most mundane experiences. It’s equal parts psychological and physiological, and has a slightly different frisson each time, and my body is still so unfamiliar with the sensation I can’t figure out whether to run away from it or run toward it. Sometimes it feels like I can hold it back, and sometimes it’s like my body is involuntarily forcing it out of me. Sometimes it comes out in a torrent, and sometimes it come out in fit and starts, like I’m hacking up a lung or a fit of laughter. But it’s here in a big way.
I have plenty of theories about what shifted, and all of them anger and annoy me in some way, because they seem capricious and unfair and out of my control. I went through a season of personal and professional upheavals that I guarantee rewired my brain. The podcast I assumed would be my career ended ignominiously, in crushing sadness and regret. I had a mental health episode that was unforseen and totally upended my sense of self. I, like everyone else, lived through the pandemic, and unlike everyone else, had two young kids. And now I’m adrift in a kind of professional limbo, working on the next big thing and in the meantime trying to do things that make me feel fulfilled, but more often just sleeping late and watching horror movies.
Whatever the cause of this mid-life turn toward tears, I have a new passenger now. These tears operate fairly independent of me and constantly surprise me. I found myself completely falling apart at the news that Dave of De La Soul had died. I’m not a lyrics guy, but sometimes a piece of music will just cut right through me. Kids movies do me in every time. Sometimes I will hear a moment of joy in someone’s voice, read a deeply resonant line in a book, or try to explain something essential to my experience of the world to my kids and suddenly be choking on my own font of emotion.
Strangely though, the most profound realization I have reached crossing the crying rubicon is that weepers and non-weepers fundamentally misunderstand one another. I have spent my entire life treating adult tears like those of an infant; an expression of some lack or discontent that transcends words, and one that is meant to be immediately addressed. When confronted with tears, I would immediately attempt to leap into action in an attempt to accommodate the crier, to ameliorate the crying. Tears had, in my experience, been a problem to solve, an emotional pipeline sprung a leak.
But I get it now. And I want to apologize to everyone who has cried in front of me for the last 40 years or so. Crying is actually, for those people who do it, an important part of their emotional plumbing. It’s the spit valve on a brass instrument, a way to sluice the overwhelming. It’s a pressure release. Not something to be fixed, but the fix in and of itself. So to anyone I’ve annoyed by running around trying to adjust the lighting or make a ham sandwich or get to talk about their feelings because they shed a few tears, I apologize.
Because the other side of suddenly crying is that while, yes, it is a like the waste of my emotional digestive system, crying in front of other people triggers involuntary spirals of shame over worrying and upsetting people who don’t get it. People like me, until a couple years ago. It’s just this negative feedback loop of people upsetting each other more and more by trying to make the other more comfortable.
I don’t know, this may not be revelatory to anyone other than me. Certainly not for the weepers in reading this. You’re probably, by now, annoyed you’ve hit almost 1000 words and haven’t learned anything. But it was a huge moment of realization for me. Maybe it might be hlpful for you too. I only cried once while I was writing this. But if I cried more, it would have been ok.
Hey dude. You don’t know me and all I know about you is what I’ve heard you out out there on the internet. I just want to tell you: you are enough. You, as you are, are pretty goddamn ok. Awesome, even, imo. You are the best dad your kids will ever have. You have a gift for bringing joy and thoughtfulness to thousands. Life is shit and it’s pretty hard, but you’re kinda better at it than average and noticeably so. Hope you will be well, in the long term.
Alex, I’m glad you’re feeling safe enough in your body to cry. I’m not there yet but reading your story helps.