In the film Broadcast News Jane Craig, played by Holly Hunter, who is caught somewhere in her thirties or forties, sits down at the side of her bed, takes a deep breath, and starts to sob, really sob. She proceeds to succumb to a spluttering, messy crying fit, the kind that includes hiccups and the unfortunate intermingling of tears and snot. Soon enough she stops, dusts herself off, and moves on to the next item on her lengthy to-do list. As stealthily as this terrible, wracked state has overtaken her it has moved off. The audience might well describe Jane Craig, for at least a minute or two, as possessed.
If this morning you had observed me, late to work as usual, you would have witnessed a facsimile of Jane’s possession scene in Broadcast News. On the radio Neil Young was singing “Heart of Gold,” and I reached to double the volume, because Neil Young demands to be loud. I started to sing along, forgetting that I was late to work, and then? I found myself bawling. With shock I touched my face, wet, and heard myself crying, as if there were two people in the car, one falling to pieces and the other documenting the crash. Within a minute it was all over, and I breathed in and out a few times, steadying myself, and pulled into the school’s parking lot.
This is forty-four years old, when life — and by life I mean the people in one’s life, because most of us at forty-four have many people, young and old, depending on us, demanding of us, pushing us this way and pulling us that — does not give. There’s no time to process feelings. There’s no time to have the feelings one might wish to process. So every few weeks or months, we make room, as we must, for hysterics, our bodies’ only way to handle all of the unexamined dross that builds up until there’s no more room to accommodate it. We cry tears utterly foreign to us, because we lack the space to investigate their source. Then we take some shuddering breaths and press on.
One day, I’ve been told, when my life contains some hollow parts, and time stretches before me like taffy, seeming to expand beyond all rhyme and reason, I will look back on these busy years with fondness, even longing. I am skeptical. I wonder why life’s stages seem so lopsided, either maddeningly busy or poignantly empty — never any middle ground. So to the grandmotherly type who once advised me to enjoy these years when I am betwixt and between, not able to settle in here or there or anywhere, I ask, “Have you forgotten about the alien crying jags? What of those?,” and I add that I yearn for nothing more than a moment or two out of time when I can listen to Neil Young with something closer to pleasure than to pain.
Oh, Sarah.
That dj just spun the wrong song. How about…
“We’ve been through
some things together
With trunks of memories
still to come
We found things to do
in stormy weather
Long may you run.”
It’s something to think about, what you say here – I have my share of people in my circle who are at that end stage, with too much time on their hands. I envy them. I can’t imagine anything I would like better than to have enough time to sleep, enough time to ruminate about things that interest me, enough time to sit in the sun and recall snatches of songs, then sing them off-key. But they tell me otherwise. They tell me they’ve got ants in their pants and they’re bored to tears.
I may have to watch Broadcast News again, or at least look for that scene on YouTube, because I remember it differently. It struck me that Jane Craig was so in control of everything that she deliberately allowed herself that moment to sob out her stress so she could get on with it. It works.
Peace, girl.
the wrong song. a definite possibility, de.
What gnaws at me and brings me to unexpected tears is the realization that at my age, some chances are forever lost. No one in America, the Land of Opportunity, wants to admit that sometimes it really is TOO LATE. Oprah and her minions be damned; some things can’t be changed. I am running out of time.
exactly, v. i feel this, too. i feel it acutely.
See? This is why I love you. I cried just this morning as well. Got to listening to a mix CD I put together a couple years ago for my oldest son, who will be graduating high school in less than a month. When I made the disc, the future looked . . . different. And now it’s here. His possibilities are limitless, while mine just aren’t anymore. As Veronica said, some opportunities just pass us by.
Shit.
I’m about to cry again . . .
Yes.
Have you noticed these moments always occur during songs?
They do, don’t they…
“We cry tears utterly foreign to us, because we lack the space to investigate their source. Then we take some shuddering breaths and press on.”
Oh my, yes! Just this morning, sitting in the hospital waiting to have a very minor procedure done, I burst into tears in front of the poor woman trying desperately to get an IV into one of my elusive veins. It was like that one last stick of the needle finally pierced the delicate membrane that was holding me together and I popped. That poor, poor nurse. No amount of protests could convince her that it wasn’t physical pain that brought me to tears but a sudden, overwhelming sadness, and a nagging feeling that I should know what was causing it but didn’t. Because it’s never just one thing but a cocktail of pressures, anxieties, losses and just being stretched so thin. So I found myself comforting her and pulling myself together. Because that’s what we do. We pull it together and press on without ever really investigating what brought us to this place.
I loved reading this. I felt so connected to it. Which is, in itself a kind of balm.
Wow, Joy. Sounds like many of us had a pretty unhappy morning. I’m glad you get it, though.
It happens to everyone, but then we get out of the car and pretend it didn’t happen at all and I think it would be easier if we all cried together.
Em, agreed. One of the things I mourn is the lack of time to connect with empathetic friends who might understand this.
Friends like you.
I have those kind of crying jags sometimes too. Once, Jewel’s Foolish Games got me. In public.
Yep. Jewel might easily do that to me, too.
i needed to read this tonight. now i think i can stop doing stuff like a gerbil and go to bed, just a little bit heard and understood. xo.
i’m happy that you could take some comfort here, bon.
i loved that scene. raw. very real. i used to replay it in the shower in my 30′s, when i was in the throes of all that responsibility. no time to think. process my own demons. rest my brain.
it started to go away as the children entered high school. then college. then post-divorce, i found myself walking the halls of the family home. pacing. confusing my dog terribly as i wandered from room to room.
i don’t miss it. took a few years to make the transition. i did it. i’m proud of it. love my children more than anything. but i like being able to sit around in my undershorts, scratching my bits, drinking coffee and farting around on the internet without guilt…
(and yes. neil must be loud.)
hah! god knows we all need time to scratch our bits.
neil is right–for me, hot tears ( a betrayal, often) seem to spring randomly while listening to particular songs. but, joy, too, comes to me at equally unexpected moments.
that’s true, c. joy is there, too. maybe not as often as i’d like, but it is there.
I was trying to explain this to someone the other day, how my life had this definite demarcation line –when my son left for bootcamp and my sister had to be moved in for a bit– where everything just spiraled into this nonstop pounding of emotional reserves.
‘life does not give’ sure encapsulates what I was trying to say, and it does so succinctly and well.
thank you, jett. i know that you of all people understand this too well.
i really identified with this. You describe so well the push me- pull you of demands, not just of parenthood, but of a myriad different things clamouring for our attention. I’ve got a couple of years on you at 46, and I’m acutely aware of possibilities narrowing down, avenues closing. I hate that feeling.
I hate it, too. I really do.
I think, for me, sometimes it’s just a brief grasp that death comes to us all. That these moments of being overwhelmed end when we die. That what we have to do, no matter how important it is, will come to an end. Which is why it often hits me during songs, too. It’s when my brain has calmed down enough to grasp a larger motion than I can when I am on the gerbil wheel. Speaking from 47 with small kids.
(And, there was just a study showing why certain sequences of notes “make” people cry- apparently, the “crying parties” held with Adele’s song piqued a scientist’s interest- so some of it may be physiological, then continue because we need it and the release.)
Whoa. That bit about the research into certain sequences of notes is fascinating!
Sarah you always have a way of knowing exactly what I am feeling and then articulating it so damn beautifully you take my breath away.
Love you.
x
love you too, k.
Although it’s good for me to know that many of us are doing this, so I’m not alone, it makes me sad to realize we’re all doing this. Alone. For me, it’s the songs that resonated so strongly as a teen that send me to my knees today.
it IS sad. maybe what we all need is a crying party.