Crying

Lily had been one of my closest friends for three years before I saw her cry. It was over a boy. It was in her Subaru in the parking lot after school. Her brown eyes, usually relaxed and neatly lined with mascara, were clenched and puffy and streaked with blood and leaking huge wells of salt water onto her shirt. She didn’t wipe her face, but tucked tangles of hair behind her ears industriously so they wouldn’t keep getting caught on the spit dribbling out of her mouth or the snot drying on her chin. Huge sobs possessed her and bobbed her up and down like a buoy in turbulent waves and left her gasping for air. 

That kind of violent, calorie-burning crying is one of the ugliest and weirdest things the human body does. When we lose control of our own bodies, it’s often the result of some tangible, molecular hijacking: a virus has infiltrated lung tissue, a parasite has embedded itself into the intestinal lining, a strain of bacteria has begun to reproduce under the skin. But when we cry, it’s the result of abstractions like words and feelings. Deadly viruses and malicious bacteria can destroy our organs without showing any visible signs, but we get sad or angry or tired and water starts pouring out of our faces and we can’t breathe. No other animals are so outwardly, physically affected by emotions as we are. So why do we do it? Why do we cry?

One theory suggests that crying helps us physically reduce our stress, since tears linked to emotion rather than reflex have higher concentrations of proteins released as a result of stress. In this way, crying literally sheds stress, making us able to get over whatever caused the crying.  

Another, more widespread theory suggests that crying is a tool for unifying groups of people by signalling a need for aid. According to Evolutionary Psychology, the kinds of tears caused by feelings (rather than onions or cold wind) are an evolutionary response, meant to signal to others genuine distress. Because tears blur your vision when you cry, they essentially handicap you until others can help you, increasing communication within groups of people and ensuring survival for the whole community.  

Historically, some depictions of crying have viewed it in the same light evolution does: as a healthy display of sincere distress. For example, there’s a scene in The Odyssey where Odysseus’s son, Telemachus, visits King Menelaus for supper. Menelaus  fought alongside Odysseus in the Trojan War, and as he tells stories of Odysseus’s bravery to the group, Telemachus begins to cry. Instead of making fun of him, Menelaus recognizes Telemachus’s tears as a show of his devotion to his father and begins to cry, too. Here, crying shows strength in Telemachus’s love and reverence for his father; it portrays him both to Menelaus and to audiences as loyal and dedicated. 

But while crying has evolutionarily served to strengthen the human race and is respected in some cultures,  it’s seen as a weakness in others. I understand why—tears seize their victims, unwind them, and leave them unable to talk or breathe properly so they can’t fight back. If crying is asking for help, then it concedes some sort of weakness in the crier that they can’t fix themselves. 

When talking about the perception of crying as weakness, it’s impossible to discount the role gender plays. It’s no secret that men are encouraged to suppress their emotions, which could contribute to the fact that women reportedly cry around five times as often as their male counterparts. But part of this could be biological. According to the American Psychological Association, a hormone called prolactin that promotes crying is more abundant in females, and research suggests that testosterone inhibits crying.

I think that even when men do cry, they do it differently. It’s more contained. More controlled. This is a huge generalization, and lots of men cry heavily and lots of women cry delicately. But I remember when my friend Ben called me to cry when his girlfriend of three years broke up with him the week before prom. He was in control of sniffles, rather than overtaken by sobs. I could hear his voice break, but he was able to choke out sentences. From my end of the phone, from the way he spoke, I imagined he was probably sitting still and allowing tears to stream down his face. It was a hauntingly empty cry. More passive than active. 

Ben had a stronger connection to this girl than Lily had to her boy, but showed less in his crying. Maybe the comparison between Lily and Ben conveys more about the nature of bottling up tears than it does about gender. Ben is more emotional than Lily. I had seen him cry before. Lily’s crying probably carried a lot with it, whereas Ben’s fit within the confines of his situation. I feel comfortable making that generalization, that people who cry more cry small, and people who cry less cry big. 

There’s a power in crying, especially in a long, therapeutic cry. I don’t know if that’s supported by science. It’s definitely supported by me. When I’ve had a really long or really hard week, I put on Titanic to get the tears flowing. It has everything: mass death, heartbreak, Celine Dion music. I watch the first half so tense with anticipation that by the time the ship hits the iceberg, I’m ready. There are a few moments during the sinking of the ship that make me burst into tears, like when the old couple dies holding each other’s hands, and when the Polish mother is reading to her children as water fills steerage, and when the orchestra keeps playing amid the chaos. I keep a steady stream of tears flowing in between.  The Mesopotamians and the Greeks and the Hebrews and probably more all had some sort of myth where God or the gods wipe out the world with a huge flood to start fresh. That’s how I feel after a good Titanic cry, fresh. Baptized by the tears, wiped clean by their flood, delivered to some DiCaprio-Winslet-induced catharsis. 

I think that’s how Lily felt after her cry, too. By the time her eyes had cleared up and she hit the road, she was more ashamed that she had cried over him than she was actually sad over him. She had transformed back into the badass she usually is, her emotional capital having been transferred from mourning to annoyance at teenage boys. Unblinking, she drove on. 

Works Cited 

Collier, Lorna. “Why We Cry.” Monitor on Psychology, American Psychological Association, www.apa.org/monitor/2014/02/cry. 

Dahl, Melissa. “Why Do Women Cry More Than Men?” The Cut, 7 Jan. 2015, www.thecut.com/2015/01/why-do-women-cry-more-than-men.html. 

Zeifman, Debra M, and Sarah A Brown. “Age-Related Changes in the Signal Value of Tears.” Evolutionary Psychology: an International Journal of Evolutionary Approaches to Psychology and Behavior, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 12 Aug. 2011, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22947977.