Gray funk, day 2

It’s another gloomy day. Yoga class usually helps, but today’s breathing exercises left me feeling impatient, irritated and cranky.

Maybe I just need a good cry. During the class (while I was supposed to be chanting and breathing through my chakras) I found myself trying to remember how many times I’ve cried in the past year. Aside from the open floodgates of my father’s funeral just over a year ago, there have only been a few.

I remember getting weepy for no reason last Christmas when I was going through chemo and feeling over-tired. The tears came again when I was saying goodbye to my son Adam at the Amsterdam airport in June (airports make me emotional because I always seem to be saying goodbye). Other than a few sniffley moments watching The Time Traveler’s Wife (the part where he met his mother on the train got to me), that’s about it.

Some women can cry and then look like a million bucks afterwards. Not me. My upper and lower lids swell up and look raw enough to be more at home on the ass end of a dog in heat than on my face. They stay like that for about 2 days.

So if I need to have a good cleansing cry (which is where I think this cranky feeling is heading), I’d better make sure it’s worth it. It may be time to bring out the big guns: Out of Africa. I’ve probably watched it 5 or 6 times and have never been able to get through it without what Oprah refers to as ‘the ugly cry’. Not only do I cry at the sad parts, I know the movie so well that I start to cry just before the sad parts, in anticipation.

I may be wearing sun glasses for the next few days…