Repost: It Gets Better

Unless I am trying to make them feel bad, I do not cry in front of my kids. And even then, it doesn't really work, it doesn't make them feel ashamed and sorry, it makes them feel frightened and distressed, the way you might feel if the pilot of the airplane you were on just walked out of the cockpit weeping with his head in his hands. So when I need to cry, I usually go sit in my car. (I'm saying this like it's a weird thing I do a few times a week, but really it's only happened two or three times). If I had a driveway, this would be fine, but my car is parked on the street where it's hard to have a proper, full out, unselfconscious breakdown. I can usually get a few minutes in before someone walks by, usually someone walking a dog who needs to stop and sniff and investigate the muffled whimpering sounds before peeing on my tire.

Yesterday I had a full five minutes of un-interrupted sadness before the guy I've had a crush on since last year came around the corner with his two dogs and a girl. They were holding hands. And she was wearing high heels and a dress from the night befooooooooooooooore. I shrunk down in my seat and pretended to be asleep, but then worried that they might think I was dead or worse, insane, so I pretended instead to look for something under the glove compartment. Once they were past I started all over again, this time with actual moaning sound effects. It didn't make me feel any better, but it seemed to get out of my system more quickly. You can only listen to yourself making alien sounds for so long.

I sat forward to start the car and the key just clicked. The battery was dead. Dead. If I was writing a scene where the sad sack main character had just cried in the car, I wouldn't even write such a thing. It's too much. Too stupid. Overkill. But there it was. I tried it a few times to make sure that, in my grief, I wasn't hallucinating, but...nothing. I thought about crying some more but called AAA instead. I was relieved for the distraction; this was a problem with a quick solution.