Fierce Fireworks, and Stuff

Sometimes you just need a good cry.  I have been told this by numerous friends over the years, friends whom I valued, and whose opinions I trusted.  This did not stop me from having serious doubts about this assertion anyway.  Don't get me wrong, I have certainly had my fair share of moments when life seemed beyond cruel and it was all I could do to just keep breathing.  In fact, I've had far more of these moments than I care to remember or admit to.  I have been so far down at the bottom of my emotional well that even the thought of suicide provided no relief.  Even at these times, I knew that I had two options.  The first was to just swallow any and all emotion, and put every conceivable energy into suppressing them.  The second was to just let go (at least as much as I was capable of at the time) and cry.  Inevitably in those moments when I've chosen to cry, I have only felt worse after my tear duct pyrotechnics took center stage.  It not served to make me feel vulnerable on top of everything else.
Given all of this, it was with great anxiety that I found myself slipping further and further down the rabbit hole not long ago.  The reality of my third move in eight months, once again doing it nearly entirely on my own and dragging my kids along with me, was setting in.  The Niagra Falls of other emotions crashing down the back door as the Move  assaulted from the North was only serving to add to the avalanche that I could feel coming any moment.  And then it happened.  As I sat on my bed, rolling coins, of all things, I came across my ring.  This ring that I picked out, that represented me better than any physical manifestation I've found before or since, came rolling out of a jar of coins and almost into my lap.  And that was the proverbial straw that broke this camels back.  The flood gates opened, and my body heaved as everything that I've been clinging on to and forcing down for dear life came streaming down my face. Suddenly months of anxiety, and fear, and regret, and anticipation, and suppressed emotion and repression were suddenly gone.  I knew that they had not left completely, and that I still had things I needed to work through, the weigh of them came crashing to the floor like the shards of a shattered mirror.    I that moment I had no choice but to laugh, and for the first time ever, I felt, and I felt better.
I never doubted my dear friends when they said how much better they felt after crying, I just didn't think it was possible for ME.  I didn't think that this opening of soul, this allowance of vulnerability and weakness could have any other outcome than shame and pain, not for me.  How wrong I was.  The question now is.....what the hell do I do with that?!