I found this beautiful poem the other day - entitled “Portrait in Nightshade and Delayed Translation” - and it really resonated with me. I imagined I was the one in front of the painting, crying. Sobbing. For no apparent reason, other than for the single characteristic that unites us all. Being human. I connected with the narrator’s self questioning : “What reflex betrays one like this?”, he writes.
“What nerve agent did Rembrandt hide within the dark shades of paint that he used? What inside me had malfunctioned, had left me kneeling and sobbing in a museum?”
I wonder.
Sometimes, I find myself wanting to cry or feeling certain emotions, and I don’t know why. I just feel this vibrations that I can’t seem to identify. I could be at home, going through my routine. I could be on my commute to school. I could be at school. It depends. Sometimes, they’re familiar feelings, but more often they’re strange. And I can’t describe them, so it makes it hard to talk to others about my experience. “What do you mean?”, they ask. I don’t know.
It’s weird I always try to find a reason for something. Where did this habit grow? Why do we always want to know why? Why not just let ourselves be? I don’t have an answer to those first questions, but lately, as a remedy to this conundrum, I’ve been trying to be comfortable with my emotions. To let all of them be. The good ones. The bad ones. When it’s the latter, I try to sit with my discomfort. And when I get an overwhelming sense that I want to cry, but I have no specific reason to, I cry. If anyone else finds themselves in this position, LET THAT SHIT OUT.
"Just cry. Just cry. Free yourself.”
The last stanza of this poem spoke to me.
Even now, after so much time has passed, I have no clue what any of this means. I still haven’t figured out whether or not I am the lost son or the found.”
Do you ever cry unexpectedly?