Fall Freedom and the Fear of Tears - a fragment

October is a “trigger” month. Pumpkins of recollection sprout out of nowhere and I stub my toes on their unyielding surfaces everywhere I go. Sometimes it’s hard to know if I’m growing them myself, or if God just likes chucking them my way this time of year. It’s not hard to understand why – Ryan’s birthday is at the end of month and he would have been 29 this year.

But October also marks the burgeoning of fall and the end of persistent summertime in Hong Kong. Fall is my favorite time of year no matter what city I’m in, but I anticipate it even more in this one. October is when the humidity begins to ease off, allowing fans and air-conditioners to heave a sigh of relief and take a break from relentless summer days. Despite the pumpkins clouding my mind and sight, the past few mornings I’ve walked out of my apartment complex into the brisk, serene air and immediately felt the need to stretch my arms out to the sky above, undoubtedly looking a bit foolish with a happy grin overtaking an otherwise stubbornly pensive face.

Always feels good to stretch up and feel those arm muscles lengthening towards the possibilities above, not so out of reach as they seem in the oppressive summer heat. Stretch up and feel the sense of freedom - freedom from the clinging smog, freedom from perspiration filling every single pore, freedom from having nothing in your closet to wear that would feel like another sweat-drenched wool sweater upon your skin…ah yes, the freedom of fall, crisp and clean, opening a whole other closet door of possibilities: minis atop knee length boots that instantly make you feel like a fashion icon, cashmere tanks that allow you to be warm and cool all at once, cute little berets and stylish skullcaps for bad hair days.

But I digress. Let me continue...to digress that is. Fall is also for falling in love, hehehe, I’ve always believed that. Come on, there’s a reason they call it “fall” right? No other season has an alias. Spring is spring, summer is summer, and winter, well, winter, but autumn has another distinctly suggestive name. Fall is full of possibilities and hopes and dreams hanging in the still air, hanging amongst the colored leaves aflutter in the gentle breeze, hanging like exhilarated first-time paragliders suspended above green seacliffs, hanging like that perfect line you could have said but didn’t, letting the moment pass you by.

This year, “fall” seems to have taken on another aspect of meaning for me - the cascading of tears from a well I thought had long dried up. Tears squeezing out from the corners of my right triangle eyes as I wince from another stubbed toe on yet another pumpkin. Tears catching me unawares as I relate to another moment in a novel that just so happens to be about a girl whose husband dies at an early age leaving her to traverse the colorful pages in her chapters of grief. Tears springing uncontrollably when I hit another “trigger point”, be it the never-ending estate paperwork that needs to be signed, or the anticipation of my godparents' impending visit, aka Ryan's parents.

You’d think years down this path alone would have steeled me from these tears, but just because you lock it all in an aluminum silo does not mean the waterworks dry up, in fact, as soon as an outlet punches through the metal walls the tears rush out with added pressure, much to your dismay. Not only that, but tears, I realize more and more, tears frighten those around you. Not only are you freaked out by them but those around you are invariably more freaked out than you are. I think it’s because our culture is not a big advocate of those big fat harbingers of emotional release that stream down our faces. You’re advised not to cry, to hold back, keep those emotions tucked safely away from sight, patch up that aluminum silo in your soul and dam those suckers from making their way to the light. Yet I wonder, what is so terrible about crying anyway? What is there to fear in tears?

Tears carry the grief out of you, don’t they? Grief, worry, helplessness, agony, fear upon fear are plumbed from the depths of your being, lined up one by one in bleary eyes awaiting to throw themselves onto the slide of freedom scaling down the contours of your face, ultimately to dry in salty patches on your skin or meeting their demise by Kleenex (or Tempo if you’re still in Asia). Each droplet distilling a part of those emotions somersaulting inside you. Each drop a part of the process, that beautiful process that transforms the Traumatized into the Survivor, and eventually, into just You, sans titles, sans labels.

So I say, cry away. Go crazy. Let those rivulets flow, I tell you. Let them tears freefall in peace.

No more fear of tears.
It's fall, for goodness' sake.

***sent to me today, by one who knows the way***
"...So let the mind with care o'rought,
Flow down the gentle tides of thought;
Calm visions of unending years,
Beyond this moment of fears."