When the tears won't come

The protector inside all of us

I used to wedge myself in my closet, even when I was too big to comfortably fit. Knees to my chest, packed between faded binders and worn children’s books. Clothes too big Mom said I’d grow into. An old blue Lego tub stuffed with Clone Trooper action figures. 

And sob in the darkness. 

Where no one could see my shadow.

Not even me.

In those moments, my emotions became too much for me to bear — even as I’d increased my threshold for suffering over the years. In the confines of my closet, the darkness, I felt the entire world bearing down on me.

I needed release. I needed to cry. Most of all, I needed to be held.

But wasn’t.

//

Growing up, I was sensitive and emotional. An empath. Deeply in tune with how others around me felt, especially when they were in pain. I must’ve been a therapy dog in another life — always knowing when to wrap you up in a warm embrace or lay my head on your shoulder. 

The stories Mom and 奶奶 (Nǎi nai — grandma) tell me now confirm the sentiment. And when I look at old pictures of myself, I see it. I feel it. The glint in my eyes. The smile so pure and true. One radiating with love. One that shrunk away with age. Shifting into a forced smile. 

Eventually a frown.

At some point, it stops being “cute” or “appropriate” to be emotional and sensitive. Especially as a boy. An Asian boy. One with immigrant parents.

My childhood photos suggest the age of eight. 

You’re expected to “grow up.” To don your cowboy hat and rein your emotions under control. You keep a tight leash on them, stop showing them to anyone at all. Knowing they’ll get you in trouble at school. In trouble at home.

“How can you be upset? You’re ruining dinner.”

“If you’re not happy, don’t come home.”

“Why are you crying? You’re a guy.”

I’d storm into my room and slam the door. It never fully shut so I’d go back and give it a shove. Fall to my knees. Weep. Allowing myself a few minutes, then bottle up the rest of the tears for a never time.

Each time I was hurt, I erected another wall. Encircling, gatekeeping, the inner citadel of my heart. Unconsciously cutting my emotions off from the outside world.

The tender little boy who had the gift of feeling, who radiated love. A boy now a faded memory. A photo in a dusty album.

The tears stopped coming.

//

As a kid, I started being drawn to a certain archetypal character. Kakashi and Itachi from Naruto. Clone Troopers and Boba Fett in Star Wars. The Unsullied and Sir Barristan Selmy in Game of Thrones. All unique in their own right, but all protectors of something.

All warriors.

I must’ve seen myself in them. The warrior identity one I aspired to don myself. An identity that possessed all the qualities a sensitive and emotional boy didn’t have. 

Committed. Unflinching. Chivalrous. Brave. Strong. 

Emotionless.

As kids, that’s how we choose identities and role models. Some unconscious part of us sees something in them, something we seem to understand from an unspoken place.

Especially if it’s from a place of pain. 

“I see you. You see me.”

//

While pledging my professional fraternity, I saw a lot of my pledge brothers (we’re co-ed) break down in tears — especially after reviews filled with criticism and disappointment from the chapter. I couldn’t understand why they were crying. It was the equivalent of getting chewed out by an older sibling. I’d experienced far worse with my parents.

And my brother.

“This is nothing.”

I heard my parents echoing in my head. A message my parents transmitted to me when I was hurting — only spoken in my voice.

I’d sit there, a stoic, almost bored expression on my face. “Is this it?” But I was conflicted. There was a part of me that felt for them. A part that hurt to see another human being in pain. One that prompted me to sit with them, listen — be there.

One that felt familiar.

Then there was the part that judged their crying, their emotions, as weakness. A part that thought “They’re not ‘cut out’ for this.” One that viewed them as unworthy.

One that felt familiar.

//

In my sophomore year of college, I was watching Free Solo, a documentary on Alex Honnold’s free solo climb of El Capitan. One of the greatest human feats in history.

The documentary was brilliant, but what I remember most is Alex joking about being a robot. Meticulous, calculated, fearless. Emotionless. A modern-day warrior despite his gangly unthreatening appearance.

Big bright eyes.

“I see you. You see me.”

I understood him. My friends felt the same — joking that I was a robot. They said it was because of my discipline and work ethic. Deep down, I thought it was because I didn’t feel.

Not to say I didn’t feel anything at all, but the walls were so numerous and thick that my emotions rarely escaped. Especially the painful ones. The weak ones. The ones that get a little boy hurt. Sadness, anger, shame, you know them well. They weren’t appreciated in my family, though they routinely showed up for Mom and Dad. 

Better said, they weren’t appreciated in me.

But emotions aren’t a pick two of the three — just choose the ones you want! When you numb yourself from one, you numb yourself from all of them. Experiencing them in a subdued manner. 

Experiencing life in a subdued manner.

Stuck in a gray in-between.

//

Over the years, I’d experience more moments of excruciating psychological pain. Heartbreak. Overwhelm. Betrayal. Moments I let myself go. Let a few of the drawbridges and gates down. Allowing the emotions to run toward freedom because they were more painful to keep in. Allowing a few tears to sneak by before catching myself and then damming them up again.

Exhale.

Emotional release.

Inhale.

Back in again.

Hold everything in until you can’t breathe. Cathartically gasp for air. Rinse and repeat.

The cycle repeated itself until November 2020, my senior year of college. I thought I had life “figured out.” I was set to graduate in the top 5% of my class, had a “prestigious” job lined up post-grad, was the president of my professional fraternity, and had a thriving social life. You could say it helped I was also jacked and had a six-pack. But looks don’t matter right?

The cherry on top: the crush I’d been hung up on, the one who left me at the altar, wanted to give it another shot.

The missing piece.

But as the story goes with college romances, things didn’t work out. Again. Now you’re telling me, despite me having seemingly everything you’d want in a partner, you still don’t want me? My brain couldn’t compute. Running every simulation it could to explain why and coming up “inconclusive.”

Nothing made fucking sense.

Nothing figured out.

I was in agony. Beyond even my threshold for suffering. Up until 4 AM in the darkness of my room, writhing in my bed, questioning what I was missing:

“Am I not attractive enough?

“Am I not flirty enough?”

“Am I not enough?” 

Suffocating from the inside, I let down all the gates to let air into every pore I could muster. Hoping to soothe the burning pain of yet another heartbreak.

But with my heart unguarded, I was finally naked. Exposed.

My shadow broke through.

We wrestled, but I was no match in my state. Dripping with sweat. Beaten down to the point of exhaustion. Nowhere, no energy, to run.

He led—no—dragged me into the dark forest he called home. A place I vaguely knew of, but pretended didn’t exist for my sanity. How could I function, play my role as the happy-go-lucky overachiever who had it all, knowing such darkness lay dormant within?

Propped up on a bed of pine needles, he pulled out thick photo albums weathered with age. Pregnant with memories repressed from long ago, but ones he’d held onto. The van ride back from the youth leadership camp in D.C. The conversation in hushed critical tones at a family friend’s house. 

A little boy wedged into a closet, bearing his soul to the darkness when no one else would witness him. See him. Feel him. Hold him.

With each photo, each story, I felt what he felt. Emotions I hadn’t allowed myself to feel all these years. Emotions I’d banished to the dark forest — the ones he was left to pick up and bear alone.

I understood his pain — a pain that was my own.

“I see you. You see me.”

Sitting in the silence, I wrapped my arms around him. Held him. An unfamiliar, yet familiar sensation.

Under the gentle eyes of the moon, you would’ve seen snot and tears dribbling not just down his chin, but mine too. 

//

Exiting the forest, I started to palpably feel more alive. I’d tell people I felt as if a storm cloud over my head had lifted. It’d been there my entire life, I just didn’t know it. I was so used to, conditioned to, life “not working out.” Life happening “to me.” To the fall being my fault. 

Some part of me missing.

Truth is, nothing is ever missing. You’ve been whole the whole time. A wholeness you realize when you embrace rather than cast away. Not just the “shiny” parts you show Mom and Dad for love and connection, but also, especially, the “twisted” parts that drove them away.

They’re all just parts.

The internal shift radiated outwardly in how I related and connected with others. Nearing graduation, I had a wave of interactions that left me stunned. The conversations were deeper, more vulnerable. With the gates up, I’d open up my heart to them, they’d open up theirs to me. Stoking a warmth I hadn’t experienced before.

Or perhaps not in some time.

Life felt richer. More vibrant. No longer was I seeing in shades of gray, but the full spectrum of the color wheel. Magenta to lavender. Cyan to copper. 

You couldn’t wipe the smile off my face.

“Is this what is to be alive?”

//

People numb themselves in many ways. Alcohol. Drugs. Porn. Whatever. I chose to erect walls around my heart and dam the flow of tears.

It’s not the action or vice itself, but the shadow lurking behind it. One people avoid at all costs because it holds onto all the wounds that never healed. The moments they weren’t seen, heard, understood.

Held.

Not because they want to, but because they need to for survival.

Just as Mom and Dad did.

But by not allowing yourself to fully experience the breadth and depth of emotions, you deny yourself the gift of being human. For to be human is to experience everything. From ephemeral highs to crippling lows, and everything in-between.

It’s by leaning into feeling, into being human, that I’ve been shaken alive by Life in an outburst of color. Experiencing Life more fully, directly, intimately. Noticing layers of depth I didn’t know existed.

I thought I was eating vanilla ice cream. Turns out I was eating birthday cake. I had never noticed the sprinkles. 

A poetry reading. The pink swath of a rising sun on a sky-blue canvas. A Biscoff croissant and long sip of a sunny day. A bone-rattling Foo Fighters tribute performance. Sitting with strangers–worldly neighbors–in a park in a foreign land I call home for the moment.

I feel it all. 

I experience it all.

The tears start to flow.

But sometimes I’ll sneeze, damming the flow. I don’t fault myself. Just something I notice with grace and warmth. Something that may be pure coincidence I’m reading into, or a sign this warrior in me is still holding on. Still committed to serving me. 

Protecting me from my shadow. 

It’s okay. You can let the walls down. Take the armor off. I know how heavy it’s been. Trust me, everything will be okay — shadow and I are close friends now. You’re safe. You’re loved. 

I’m eternally grateful for your service, but it’s time for you to serve yourself. I’ll take things from here. Take the space, and just be you. 

Fully you.

I love you,

D

The importance of The Work:

I dare you to try not to feel something:

Context: the Foo Fighters drummer, Taylor Hawkins, passed away — this is his son.