Tears

I am better now. This is just a reflection, a memory.

I read something tonight as I neared the end of a book, a scene where the past catches up with a character, and he cries. "He locked himself in the bathroom and cried, slowly, until his last tear was shed. Only then did he have the courage to admit to himself how much he had loved her."

I remember the first time I cried in front of Kevin. I was moving out of my apartment, my lovely little one bedroom Chattanooga apartment, the place where I lived for two years while teaching at Grace. It was the most wonderful little place. I was overwhelmed with sadness, probably scared about the uncertainty of my future, of where we were going and what we were going to be doing - which we didn't know. I had to move back in with my parents for a few weeks; this was very frustrating. I started crying, and I was so embarrased. I fled into the bathroom and sat on the toilet in the dark and cried. And he came in, and he was comforting in a stolid, awkward, standoff-ish way, as was natural and correct. We had been dating only two or three months. There was a hand on the shoulder, there was a neck squeeze. Crying in the bathroom is so inelegant.

I remember another time more than a year later, we had just arrived in Asia, we were a few days in to a two-week trip in Thailand. We had this dumb-luck penthouse room in a bizarrely empty guesthouse in Phuket. No shower curtain, but the view from the balcony was amazing, the sunset I guarantee would melt the heart of the most jaded, flinty bitch on earth. The beach outside our windows was still ruined, still scarred by the tsunami's rapage some 20 months earlier. But there was tension inside too, there was more uncertainty, there was limbo, there was DW-TV. We felt like maybe we didn't know what we were getting into with this around-the-world move, and having all these suitcases with us and no idea what next week would hold caught up with us and got to be a bit overwhelming. I remember Kevin's head resting on me that night, his hot tears falling onto my chest, I remember exactly how that felt, and I knew for sure that was the most love that I had ever felt in my life.

I've cried more in this past year than I ever have and ever hope to again, I'm sure. I have a tiny measure of courage, I can admit that. But it is over now, I am better now. This is just a reflection, a memory.

Just finished reading
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez-