I hate crying!

(Thinking of JLO's post about crying)

When I was a kid, I was a cry-baby. I'm the youngest of six kids, and a girl, and so I learned quickly (however subconsciously) that crying was an effective tool to get my way. Ok, well I don't really know that I used it for manipulation, but likely I did. Mostly, I felt misunderstood.

My next oldest brother and I fought ALL the time. Seriously. He despised me tagging along with him, and I despised him for despising me. We never got along. Oh, except that one time we were on a long road trip and he and I made fun of my mom's love of the Chris DeBurgh song, Lady in Red. That was one day we were united.

So I would cry all the time. Cry to my mom, cry about my mom not punishing my brother, and cry about other stuff that I won't mention because my older siblings read this blog and they'll just call me a spoiled brat. :)

The crying throughout my teenage years was depressive and hormonal. *rolling eyes* I do not miss those days.

But then I stopped crying. Movies didn't make me cry anymore, Hallmark commercials didn't, boys didn't, nothing. As an adult, I cried when my parents got divorced 9 years ago. I cried while bearing my testimony. Yeah, just talking about Christ would get me all worked up. I cried when my best friend's husband shot himself, leaving her with 1 child and pregnant with another. So my adult crying has had some basis, I believe. I could probably work up a cry now, just thinking of those same things. I don't know why, but this is also the time where I really started to hate crying. Despise it. Hide it. Crying = bad. Hmm...

Since leaving the church in spirit last November, I've turned back into that cry-baby. Ok, well not that bad. I guess, while some people are full of anger and outrage, I'm full of depression and remorse. Even knowing that "the church was all I knew", it's still hard for me to understand how I could ever have believed it.

Here's what's funny: 10 years from now, I'll probably look back on this time in my life and roll my eyes. Hopefully I'll be that much closer, then, to balance and peace.