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Why We Cry
The strange science and history of our tears.
When I lost him, I didn’t cry. Maybe because he wasn’t really gone. I felt him pulling on my bones like a phantom limb. The pain kept him knotted inside me.
But that’s the purpose of tears. A flood of oxytocin and endorphins eases our suffering. We cry to release the pain.
Oddly, the same hormones that ease the pain of childbirth also ease the sorrow of death. Humans come into this world wailing and yet leave in silence.
I would not wail for him. Not in that way.
The body makes three kinds of tears: basal — the tears that lubricate our eyes continuously. Irritant — the tears produced when the eye needs to flush out a foreign substance. And psychogenic — emotional tears.
It’s emotional tears that we feel in more than our eyes. Emotional tears can drown our souls. Even our language describes crying as a flood and not the sting of raw onions. Tears “stream down our face,” or our eyes “well up.”
When I couldn’t cry, my well became bottomless.
Many people cannot cry. Anhedonia puts them into a suspended state. Deep depression isn’t sadness. It’s the absence of joy.
Perhaps that is why men have higher suicide rates than women. They cry less often. Sure…
