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How To Ugly Cry
Today I cried.
I cried long, and hard, and ugly. I buried my face in a pillow to try and smother the sound so that I wouldn’t scare my children. I writhed in emotional and physical pain on the pull-out couch where I have spent the last six weeks sleeping. I felt like my breath was stuck in my lungs and my chest heavy, as if my heart were literally breaking. I cried so hard I gave myself a headache. I cried until I felt nothing. Which was the point — getting to empty. Getting everything out.
This was the first time I had cried since my husband informed me our eighteen-year marriage was over, nearly two months ago. He has been unhappy for years, and has taken that unhappiness out on everyone around him, especially me. Because I have spent years being disappointed, being disrespected, being ignored, and being threatened with divorce, I thought I had already grieved for the loss of our love. I thought there were no more tears left in me. I thought I was going to make it through our separation without an ugly cry.
I was wrong. I just needed the right trigger. When my husband spent an entire night at another woman’s house, and then returned home on Easter Sunday, in the middle of a pandemic that has me living in the basement of our home, it was just too much. It was exactly what I needed to start letting go of eighteen years of pain.
