Living Proof

"Why are you stifling your cries? Crying is supposed to be somewhat of a loud event." Jeffrey looked at me puzzled, as I sat across from him not crying hard enough. In the past 12 years I've been going to him for counseling, he has never once seen me cry before. To me, I was having a full-fledged meltdown. To him? I was just sniffling over something trivial, like watching the ending of Titanic. "Louder?" I asked. "Yes. You're holding back. Let it out." I sniffled some more, wiped my nose and then said, "I don't know how."  I spoke about this 5 years ago on this previous article and it mentions more about how Mom always told me, "Don't cry, mama - don't cry." I told Jeffrey about it and how my father did the same thing. They both wanted to see all of their kids happy. Crying meant that they were 100% unhappy with everything. So, even if you were crying over a heartbreak, it meant somehow, you weren't happy...

Every morning my mom will call me and let me know what's on her agenda or if she needs me to take her somewhere. Our conversation then went into cooking of course. She said, "I want to make sausage and peppers, but..."  And I knew what that "but" was. Dad used to chop all her vegetables because her arthritis leaves her in pain even after slicing one pepper. "Mom, lemme chop the veggies and we can cook stuff together." She was very happy and reminded me how Dad used to do all of the prep work for her and I then heard her voice lower almost into a whisper. She has a hard time in supermarkets because although she hates any sort of fruits, she bought them for Dad. He loved every type of fruit out there. As she walked into the produce aisle, she felt herself starting to lose it. She then went over to buy tilapia, the kind my Dad loves. She lost it. It's extremely difficult to shop for her - it's an emotional torture event that she's trying to ...