Tears dry on their own.....

You can feel it coming but usually it is a slow build. I’ll hear the news, say all the robotic responses I am supposed to say and then say good-bye. Then without the tinging fear in your voice to concentrate on there is nothing left to save me from my fears. Alone with my thoughts, I can’t help but replay the scenarios over and over again. The regrets, the worries, the pain, the forgotten promises and dreams yet realized. There’s nothing that can soothe the wounded soul.

So I’ll excuse myself. I just need a few minutes to compose myself. To wail and to rail and to scream and to complain and to whine and then I will be fine. Minutes pass and I feel a reprieve. I wash the smudged mascara off my face. Take a few deep breathes. I look at my reflection and see nothing but swollen eyes and a fake plastic smile. But it will have to do for now. I need to get back before too many people ask what happened to her.

So I head back. Tail between my legs. Head down; no eye contact. Just try to make it back to the safe haven of the computer without causing a scene. But as soon as I sit down I see the phone where the news came from. The harbringer of disaster: you feel like throwing it across the room in frustration. I see the balled up tissue I used before I realized this would be a “time out cry” not a “quietly so no one notices cry.”

And it all comes flooding back. First sniffles and then waves and waves of tears. Still, I make no eye contact with anyone. It seems like the safest route. Then my heart starts racing. I want to just get up and leave. I want to just quit and live under my comfy down quilt for the rest of my life. I want to do something but I can’t seem to help her no matter how much I try.

But I just stay seated. Take a couple of deep breathes. Stick my head between my knees and just try to calm myself down from the brink of delerium. But it’s not working. My attempts to remain inconspicuous have turned ridiculously obvious and I can’t seem to calm down or even just breathe evenly.

So I work up enough stamina to coherently say that I won’t be able to work the rest of the day and hightale it out of there. Finally beneath the shield of my sunglasses out in the open I can cry and sniffle as I please. And by the time I reached my car, my tears had dried on their own.