daily bliss: tears and laughter

Laughter bubbles, floats, roars, builds, and effervesces. It's easy.

Tears trickle, stream, pour, streak, leak, gush. They too are easy.

And yet. It's always been difficult to share both laughter and tears, to be fully me—the sensitive, feeling, emotional self that cares so much, often too much...

And so. I tried to fight back the tears, to drown them in laughter. To stay breezy and light.

Until a few years ago, when I realized that shuttering those emotions, keeping them only to myself and a very few trusted souls, was keeping me from living at true capacity.

Not that I wanted to cry openly and often with anyone—that wasn't my goal. Rather, I wanted to be as emotionally authentic as possible given the context. To trust that others could handle me. To trust that I could handle me.

And so. The laughter comes and goes. The tears trickle and flow.

Living an authentic, messy, emotional life isn't easy, or for the faint of heart. It requires me to be vulnerable. To treasure those special people who are there for both the tears and laughter.

And to let them be there, with me. Mascara streaked, red-eyed, anxious me. Goofy, giggly, dorky me. Me.