personal essay 4

warning: very serious themes ahead.

How often do you cry?

I cry about once a week on average. I don’t consider myself to be a particularly emotional person, but crying means a lot to me because it’s kind of the only way I deal with my emotions when I do get emotional. When I feel overwhelmed or mentally hurt, my natural instinct is to cry (which is probably the case for everyone). However, I don’t cry when there are people around me (at least, I try not to). This isn’t because I want to seem “tough” or anything, I don’t care about that at all. It’s because I don’t want to cause trouble to anybody. My mother has cried in front of me many times and every time was heartbreaking. I didn’t want to cause anyone to experience that feeling. When I do cry, it’s when I’m in the privacy of my room or otherwise alone. 

It might seem like my parents are uncaring towards me based on the fact that I don’t seek their help, but it’s really the opposite. My parents really care about me and they try to help me every time they happen to hear me crying in my room. Why do I still suppress my emotions, then? It’s because of the way I tend to feel when I’m sad. When I want to cry, I just want to cry. I have strong emotions that I want to let out in the form of tears. When my parents want to help me, they do it by asking me what the problem is and trying to find a solution that works. This would be the logical thing to do. However, I’m not logical when I want to cry. I have a temporary desire to isolate myself before I can do anything to help with the problem. In addition, there usually isn’t a single “problem” that’s causing my state of mind, it’s usually a combination of many things. 

However, there have been a few times I’ve burst out crying in front of my family. The one I remember most clearly happened on a drive back home from school. My mother and my sister were in the back seats. I was in the driver’s seat. When I steered the wheel to turn on a busy intersection, both of them screamed. There was a person running right in front of the car. I don’t remember what exactly happened then, but no collision occurred between the car and the person. However, the haunting thought that there could have been one burned in my mind. I started crying. My mother tried to calm me down, saying that nothing happened and that I should just take it as a lesson for next time. I would normally calm down in a few minutes when crying, but this incident felt different. My speech became erratic and I started stuttering. The crying turned into screaming. I started to feel less conscious. I managed to pull over to the side of the road after my mom told me to, and she told me to switch seats with her. But I couldn’t. I physically couldn’t move my arms or my legs. This situation worked out in the end, and nobody was hurt. However, I think this might have been a panic attack - and I had roughly 5 more similar incidents between that time and now. 

Writing this essay made me realize that I really have a problem with dealing with my emotions - either I bottle them up or let them explode. Seeking help is difficult for me, but just like the procrastination essay, my hope is that the writing of this essay can in some way help the problem I’m writing about. After all, nobody can receive help if they do not seek it.