If the world could do one truly magnificent thing for me, right now, it would be to make me cry. I am weeping on the inside, but the tears are all gone or simply won't come.

I see things in this world that should inspire me to totally lose it, to drop to my knees and make me ask, "Why?" I see them daily, almost hourly. The parent who snaps angrily at their curious child, the teenaged fool who loses his mind after taking 12 hits of acid in 2 days, the alcoholic who spends his entire day at the bar and then decides to drive home, the... oh, man, is life fucking tragic or what?

I see these things and I don't react. It's not because I'm desensitized to it. On the contrary, I'm writhing in agony within myself because I witness the subtle cruelties we deal ourselves without a second thought.

It makes me want to cry, but I can't. I've tried. I'm not concerned about how effeminite it makes me look or how long such a cry could last. I see these things and I stop and think about them, very carefully. In almost every situation I can see the root of the problem, the reason for these attrocities. The reasons I come up with may not always be 100% correct, but they're reasonable enough for all the mystery to evaporate. That most powerful of human muscles, the brain, kicks out an answer and all the intrigue and confusion disappears.

Tears and crying are symptoms of fear and confusion.

I cry when I get angry or argue heatedly with someone I love. But that doesn't happen any more. I don't get angry and I haven't argued in years. The last time I argued with someone, and I mean really argued, the other party cried harder than I did. I felt like a schmuck and vowed never to exact that kind of cruelty upon another person ever again- if I could help it. That is not to say I don't make people cry nowadays. I just don't do so with anger or contempt in my words. Mischief or brutal honesty, yes, but never malice.

The world is dying in some way that I can't put my finger on and here I am, seeing it happen in front of my eyes, and I'm not crying. I'm just sitting back and watching the show, recording it for... who?

Perhaps I feel, deep down, that to cry would be to send the world on its way to the hell that's its made for itself and be done with it. Perhaps I don't want to the world to fade away just yet, like the fading memories of travesties excised upon one another. Maybe letting go of those tears would be letting go of the world, and myself.

I am a man in control. I want to lose control. I want to cry.

A single tear shed over what happened on 9/11, a heartchoke at the news of hermetic passing, a sob at hearing of my grandmother's developing inoperable cancer and progressing senility... but not any real crying. The world is fading away and if I close my eyes to cry, it may be gone before they open again.

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