Old Me/New Me (A Writer's Workshop Exercise)

I used to be dead inside.  Now I cry ... A lot  ....   I don't know why I cry so much.  It is certainly more than simply losing a boyfriend.  More than losing my parents. 

I cry both with positive and negative stimuli.  I lie down in my couch, positioned to wail and last only seconds.  I sit in a room of 400 people at a workshop I joined to affirm all of my dreams - my very existence and during a writing exercise, I blink back tears, fearful if they get a good toehold, they will never end.

I cry and wonder why it is such a bad thing.  Why it is such a shameful thing.  Why I feel the need to hide it.

I think of my parents and realize.

I don't think I ever really saw either of them cry.

Just another gift they never gave me.