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Emotions are funny things, the way they can escape from your grasp with just a few simple words or a running thought. One moment, you have complete control over how your mind and heart react to your environment, and then before you know it the emotional flood gates have somehow opened, releasing the pent up anger, sadness, and bitterness that have manifested themselves into your head. A perceived insult, a touching commercial on TV, or a poignant fictional moment in a book can bring about chest-tightening sobs and face-soaking tears. But why? How can we sometimes raise an emotive wall to squash any potential display of love, hate, fear, or sorrow, and other times we can hardly oppress the frenzied flow of tears that seep from our eyes?

Often times, the sadness that serves as the root for our crying ends up being the cause of our laughter later on. How many times have you looked back in embarrassing amusement at an emotional overreaction which, at the time, seemed so overwhelmingly hard, but ended up being so trivial after all was said and done? For some men, this happens occasionally. For most women, this happens almost daily (or at least monthly, right?). The slightest misfortune or setback can lead to such frustration that we curse everything in sight as we cry pitifully. Hard luck turns in to disaster, and a minor obstacle turns into a calamity.

Many people can relate to me when I say that the most frequent cause of my spells of melodrama is relationships. I, more times than I would like to admit, have brought about cases of insomnia-inducing crying after discovering I've been lied to, cheated on, or gotten over. The sight of a former lover holding hands with his new flame feels like a hot poker pulled straight from the fireplace and forcefully prodded straight into our hearts. The emotional sting of such an occurrence penetrates into our physical threshold of pain, as if the sight itself somehow transformed into a weapon and sliced and diced our pride into a million dismal pieces. But years, months, even days later, you look back on such an episode and find humorous delight in the realization that, however tough it may have been at the time, the overall significance of it all was minimal, at best. These petty affairs of our youth cause such strife, but the ultimate lesson of it all is that no matter how much pain we may be in, regardless of how tough the present circumstances are, and in spite of whoever or whatever is causing disharmony in our lives, it will always get better. There will always be something bothering us, someone who picks us up or brings us down, and thoughts that haunt our mental and emotional well-being, but one day we will look back at these things that were at one time so monumental and, rather than reliving the tears, we will do the exact opposite: we will simply laugh.

Learn more about this author, Jamie LB.
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