Guilt for Crying

In Meeting this morning I burst into tears, and spent most of the Meeting crying.

The husband of the head librarian where I work was diagnosed with leukemia last week. Of the four kinds, his was the most likely to steady, or go into remission. On Friday, though, he contracted a secondary infection; Saturday morning, he died.

I'm not particularly close to my head librarian; I never met her husband. For some reason, though, this news has been hitting me pretty hard and I can't figure out why that is. So this morning, when a gentleman in Meeting shared about the death of a homeless individual and asked us to hold that person in the light, I started to crack. Even though others shared about more 'positive', uplifting topics later, I couldn't keep myself from crying.

Thing is, though: it felt really damned good to cry. And in my head there was some voice saying "Good, good, get in touch with that sadness", because I happen to have an enormously difficult time crying about anything. Like, I couldn't squeeze a tear if you shot my dog in front of me. It's not that I don't want to cry, it's just that I can't do it.

But I felt - feel - guilty as hell for that. Because these are awful circumstances, and there I was, capitalizing on the opportunity to get in touch with my own feelings of sadness. I'd feel worse if I actually did it willingly; the fact that the tears came unbidden helps.

I'm amazed by emotions, really. I don't understand them in the slightest.