High Empathy

You could call me a “crier” but I’d rather you didn’t. I prefer to see myself as suffering from what my mother calls “high empathy” – an emotional condition marked by overactive tear glands and the inability for one to distinguish someone else’s pain or happiness from her own. But, yeah, I cry a lot…I mean A LOT.

In ancient Rome I would have been a much sought after professional mourner, and would have been rich. You think Christopher Walken works all the time? I would have made him look like a shut-in. I tear up just thinking about all the easy cash I missed out on. I don’t know what my professional resume would have looked like, probably just a series of examples showing my crying range. Maybe a little something like this:

Whenever Harry Potter gets on a broom in film versions of the books, I can’t help it, my throat gets tight and my breathing gets shallow and then…it’s waterworks. Why? I have no idea! Is it the beauty of magic and possibility? Do I subconsciously want to be a wizard? Your guess is as good as mine. While I’m on the subject of movies – I had a major episode not that long ago while watching one of my Netflix rentals. Life Is Beautiful? Glory? Whale Rider? Nope, this one was grossly misrepresented as a child’s romp through an imaginary playground when in fact it was more like a simultaneous emotional cold cock to the face and a judo chop to the kidney. Jerks. Yeah, I’m talking to you Bridge to Terabithia. You can go ahead and suck it! Let’s just say that no one lives happily ever after. I should have just rented Narnia again, maybe then I could have avoided spending the rest of the afternoon with cold compresses on my eyes. Maybe.

It’s not just sad movies that get me going, oh no, just as often they are tears of joy. Wet and messy, swelling tears of joy. The worst of these examples happened several years ago when I attended the wedding of my dear, dear friend Carew and her wonderful then-fiancé Aaron. They were married in Grand Lake, Colorado which has always been an incredibly special place to me, and I was surrounded by some of my best friends in the world. Carew floated through the forest on the way to the deliver her vows and…I…lost…it. My entire row was quietly sobbing, moved by the love she and her soon-to-be-husband so obviously felt for each other and which the so beautifully shared in their original vows set against the backdrop of a warm Rocky Mountain summer sunset. And there were harps. Exhausted, puffy and red-faced, I made it back to the lodge with my friends for a recuperative drink before the reception. I think it was Haleigh who repeated an especially sweet line from the ceremony and my tears returned. The bartender put a drink in front of me, telling me the couple at the other end of the bar had purchased it for me. I looked up expecting to see someone from the wedding party, but no, it was a couple of strangers. The woman came over -- she had enormous fried blond hair -- and gave me a sympathetic and knowing look, “you’re in love with the groom?” The table erupted in laughter. It was hilarious but also incredibly telling -- I obviously had a problem if my tears of joy were mistaken as those of the deepest pain. And if I was in love with the groom, what kind of masochist would I have to be to go to his wedding?

When I’m with my mom and my little brother and one of us starts crying, forget about it. It’s like the pie-eating vomit scene from Stand By Me, you know, when the guy starts revenge puking and suddenly the whole town is horking up chucks. Except with us its contagious weeping. A lot less of a mess, but no less disturbing for onlookers. When I see my family waiting for me in baggage claim or days later when they leave me at the check-in curb; when we’re standing in the kitchen talking about our favorite family vacation to Maine; if I see a picture of our cat Buck Rogers who disappeared fifteen years ago or god forbid one of us starts the “I love you” circle – all are grounds for a cry-fest. My mom tries to rationalize the predilection for tears, “it’s the Irish in us.” And my brother and I nod, silently agreeing not to bring up my mother’s admission that her affiliation with the Irish was a choice she made in college and that we have little-to-no Celtic blood. Are the Poles especially weepy?

Sometimes I go for what seems like a very long time without so much as a whimper, and when that happens I can feel the tears start to build up and I know that a release is just around the corner. Like a pressure cooker or the Hoover Dam or a werewolf. I used to manage it back in high school by fast-forwarding to the end of Dead Poet’s Society when Ethan Hawke climbs up on his desk and declares “Oh captain, my captain.” That would be all I needed to get my cry-on. Now it comes on all willy-nilly; someone cuts the stop sign line on Carmelita, or Eric waits a whole ten minutes after he wakes up to do the dishes, or I look at my closet and hate all my clothes. There’s no rhyme or reason to any of it…so I guess it’s not like a werewolf at all. Those werewolves really do have it easy in comparison - at least they know when the full moon is on the way, just take a glance at a calendar. In addition to suffering from high empathy, it appears that I’m also having a hard time letting go of the Seth Green-as-Oz-the-werewolf episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

I went to a therapist for a short time to get my crying under control. Well, in all honesty, I went to therapy because a co-worker was driving me towards homicidal daydreams, but I stayed in therapy to work on the crying-all-the-time thing. We tried breathing techniques and meditation. I practiced taking myself out of a situation, giving myself a more realistic context, reminding myself that it was not me standing up for Robin Williams, my ousted prep-school teacher in the 1950’s, that was something called a “movie.” I think I was starting to make some real progress with it, at least I wasn’t crying within five minutes of our session start time, when out of the blue, she broke up with me. She said something ridiculous like “I think you’ve really worked through what you came here for,” and I guess she was right because my co-worker has survived this whole time but there was still so much more I needed to learn from her. She just smiled, assured me I was strong and wished me good luck. I’m pretty sure I cried all the way home.

Just last night a Radio Shack commercial got me. RADIO SHACK!!!

There are times – when I cried straight through Superman Returns for instance, a new low point – when I beat myself up for being weak, for letting my tears take over. I look at my boyfriend from behind my enormous sunglasses that I hope hide the puffy eyes long enough to make it to the Grove parking lot and wish I could be strong and in-control like him. But then who would I be? I can’t imagine how I would function without the crying option, it has been part of me since I can remember. It’s an immediate physical and emotional catharsis and I depend on it. I just have to remember to stay hydrated.