#19: BABYHOOD.

what if we all leaned into our big baby?

     ‘dear blessing & krystle’ makes a comeback.  Please send your entries here. 

rock a’by baby.

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I’ve always loved crying.

Growing up, crying was one of my favourite things to do. I was a knitted ball of sensitivity, ready to burst into tears at any given time. I don’t remember much of my childhood, but I remember being scolded by my peers for being such a crybaby. Even then I persisted. Recently my best friend reminded me of the time someone in our hostel stole a packet of hobnobs from me. I had been keeping those biscuits for a special occasion which, might I add, was not a strength for me. I loved my snacks and I loved to live in the moment (a.k.a eat them as soon as possible). This theft especially hurt me, as I had worked so hard mentally to keep my snacks. Pained, I sat on the floor of our hostel and wailed, much to the entertainment of my roommates. Now, I treasure that memory. Had I been presented with the chance to go back, I wouldn’t change it for the world. I had cried my eyes out; got the pain off my chest, and then I had laughed with them. Now when I recall the incident, I laugh about it. But I wouldn’t have been able to laugh if I didn’t cry. 

Last December, in the most comical and unlucky manner, I fell into a gutter at Madina Market (guys, the most embarrassing things happen to me). As they dragged me out of the gutter and to the floor, instead of standing up, I sat right there and wept like a baby. I wept my embarrassment away, shook myself like a wet dog would, and stood up. Later that evening I called friends and family and laughed it away. I even wrote about it. Had I not cried I would not have been able to laugh.

Are you following me, dear reader?

 The examples I have stated above are mild and benign, funny in fact. But I shared them to show you insight into my crying life. I used to cry for everything under the sun. Now I am just realizing that my crying times were my happiest times too. 

This week was very emotionally charged for me. Although it ended wonderfully, there was a point where my physical fatigue was intensely acute and I was stretched to the limits of my emotional bandwidth. All I wanted to do was sleep and cry. For some reason, I couldn’t. And it was the worst thing ever. Tears of frustration burned at the back of my eyes yet for some reason they wouldn’t spill over. I had never felt worse than I felt at that moment. It was then I realized how important crying was to me. Crying helped me through all of my bad experiences, crying helped me decompress; crying helped me sort through my emotions. Crying was my ugly yet dependable anchor. I hated that I had become that person who resisted the sacred act of crying, that purging sacred act, just because I wanted to feel grown and in control of my situation when in fact I wasn’t. 

Vincent Van Gogh, Weeping Woman (1883).

should adults cry?

There is this sentiment that adults shouldn't cry or be sensitive or even vulnerable. I disagree with that idea with all my heart. I think we ought to cry more.  Audre Lorde said it best: “I’ve been told that crying makes me seem soft and therefore of little consequence. As if our softness has to be the price we pay for power, rather than simply one that’s paid most easily and most often.”  Why are we so cautious of tears? Why are we so obsessed with being strong all the time? The truth is, we cannot be. Sometimes we have to cry.

Here’s what happens when we don’t allow ourselves to cry and feel and be sensitive. We become overfull with pain, unexplained pain with nowhere to go. I imagine unexplained pain to be like that of a teething baby. Have you seen one? Oh, they are in a world of pain but cannot speak. All they can do is cry. They cannot explain how their gums feel like they are on fire, and how all they want is a solid plastic ring that they can chew down on. Teething babies cry until they exhaust themselves and cry again because they are exhausted. One cannot help but feel sorry for them. But what is the difference between them and us? I think that there is no difference between us and teething babies sometimes. Like teething babies, we experience heavy things and are sometimes unable to explain them. Or, in a bid to numb ourselves, we bury those feelings deep down under, hoping they don’t resurface ever again.  In doing so, we only hurt ourselves more.

I have been reading Heather Havrilesky’s work recently. She is an amazing writer. In her advice columns, she does this wonderful thing of explaining yourself to you. She breaks down, line by line, what is bothering you. It struck me that for many people, what they were experiencing was unresolved, unexplained heaviness. Sadness, frustration, and angst with nowhere to go because they were refusing to feel and to cry.

I don’t like how we approach sadness and melancholy.  We bat it away wildly like it doesn't belong. We would rather drown than cry out. We have lost our sensitivity just because we are “grown”. Why is growing up measured by how less we cry? Could that be the reason why a lot of us are like fuses waiting to be set off? Could that be why we are so mean, so unsympathetic, so narrow-minded? How can we love and care for others when we don't even do so for ourselves? 

This is why babies are the best. They are honest. They wail when they are sad, distressed, uncomfortable, and tired. They know what they want in a very supernatural way, and they are attuned to the world around them. They laugh and love with abandon.  They screech at the top of their lungs with joy and crawl around the world with determination. They listen to their bodies! They don’t hide their pain. Maybe they can teach us a thing or two. It seems that babies understand a little more about life than we do. 

This is why I have decided to lean into my babyhood, that little child in me attuned to my heart. 

I don't want to lose my babyhood. I want to cry as and when. I want to love without reserve, to trust implicitly, to be strangely intuitive. I want to go to sleep when I am tired. I want to KNOW my body and respect it. I want to have an overwhelming faith in God like a child would their parents. God did say that to enter the kingdom we would have to be as children. I want to keep what little is left of my babyhood in my busy, overwhelming, and slightly confusing adult life.

 I am here to urge you to be sensitive. As Heather would say, be a sharp knife. Feel. Allow yourself to feel bad. Allow yourself to feel despondent. Sometimes you have to be incredibly sad to appreciate joy. How else would you revel in the sunshine if you didn't experience the storm? To enjoy the sunshine, you must have endured the storm. They go together oddly. How boring would life be, if we only permitted ourselves to feel good things?