Tell you a secret. I love to cry.
Apr. 3rd, 2003 07:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I think the one thing I truly resent about my father figures is that they made crying something shameful for me.
I love the absolutely freeing, cathartic elation that comes with being touched to your core by something that beautiful. I rarely cry when I'm in pain - usually, I'm too busy yelling at anyone and everyone around me to do something about making it stop already. Cruel injustice sets me off pretty quickly. Stolen opportunities, like brilliant, talented people dying young. Good triumphing over ultimate adversity. Sublime happiness. Perfection. The whole star-crossed lovers thing, that two people who live and breathe for each other can't be together, that gets me every time. I was inconsolable for a good ten minutes after Titanic, yes, let's move along.
This song.
This song made me cry the first time I saw RENT. More accurately, it opens the second act and I started crying midway through it, not stopping until well after the curtain call. It's a well-advised message to us all, but it specifically celebrates one person whose life, even though he is taken so young, was full and wonderful because he, above and beyond anything else, loved and was loved in return. He measured his life in that love, not the minutes of his workday ticking past, not in which cup of coffee he was on. And the reprise, when the cast line up and there's an empty spot where he should be standing next to Mark, I *ache* with the pain of it every time. Even now, when it happens to errantly come up on WinAmp, my reaction is instant and unconscious: I can feel the first three notes play all down my spine, already sensing the prickling in my nose imminent of tears, which are already making the corners of my eyes moist.
I love it every time. My first willful act is to smile and cherish every note as it taps something deeply primal within me. I don't hide my tears, and anyone who thinks they're a sign of weakness has never been touched in that space with which I find cause to truly pity them.
I love the absolutely freeing, cathartic elation that comes with being touched to your core by something that beautiful. I rarely cry when I'm in pain - usually, I'm too busy yelling at anyone and everyone around me to do something about making it stop already. Cruel injustice sets me off pretty quickly. Stolen opportunities, like brilliant, talented people dying young. Good triumphing over ultimate adversity. Sublime happiness. Perfection. The whole star-crossed lovers thing, that two people who live and breathe for each other can't be together, that gets me every time. I was inconsolable for a good ten minutes after Titanic, yes, let's move along.
This song.
This song made me cry the first time I saw RENT. More accurately, it opens the second act and I started crying midway through it, not stopping until well after the curtain call. It's a well-advised message to us all, but it specifically celebrates one person whose life, even though he is taken so young, was full and wonderful because he, above and beyond anything else, loved and was loved in return. He measured his life in that love, not the minutes of his workday ticking past, not in which cup of coffee he was on. And the reprise, when the cast line up and there's an empty spot where he should be standing next to Mark, I *ache* with the pain of it every time. Even now, when it happens to errantly come up on WinAmp, my reaction is instant and unconscious: I can feel the first three notes play all down my spine, already sensing the prickling in my nose imminent of tears, which are already making the corners of my eyes moist.
I love it every time. My first willful act is to smile and cherish every note as it taps something deeply primal within me. I don't hide my tears, and anyone who thinks they're a sign of weakness has never been touched in that space with which I find cause to truly pity them.