Canta y No Llores

I was sitting up and awake in the middle of the night. I'd been to a touching memorial service earlier that evening and more than once I'd fought the urge to weep openly. There had been the occasional discreet tear but nothing more. She was not the sort of person who would've wanted a bunch of tearful mourners in black. The singing and the celebrating was for her. The tears were our own selfish sadness for our loss. I refused to blubber because it wouldn't have been appropriate and because it's been too long since I've cried. I knew if I started I would break down, wailing for everything; the loss of someone dear, the fight with my husband, my frustration with my own feeble limitations. I would have cried for so many reasons. Once started a flow like that would not have stopped easily. So I did not cry.

Later that night I was staying with a friend and despite it being so much past my bedtime, and how tired I was, and how comfortable I was, I could not sleep. I was agitated, restless, and finally I gave up and got up. I sat quietly in a chair in the dark and decided that now I would cry. My children were at home in their father's care, there was no one who might need me on a moments notice, and the only possible witness was snoring steadily. It was a good time to let it all out. Nothing. I thought about all my various woes, and tried to recapture the things said earlier that had brought that unswallowable lump to my throat. Nothing.

I didn't want to spend another day on the edge of bawling. I feel like I cry all the time now, but I don't. I tilt my head up and I sniffle and I feel a few disobedient rivulets race down my cheeks and I bite my lower lip and I stomp my feet and I take a deep breath and I get back to business only to start all over again at the next frustration. I need to just let it pour out of me until tears and snot cover my red puffy face. I need to let my mouth contort like that of a hooked fish while I breathe in gurgling gasps. After a cry like that nothing bothers me; I'm emotionally spent. I tried to weep but I could not.

In my younger days when the pain would build up I would become self destructive. I would take all of the hurting I felt on the inside and make it visible. Then it wouldn't be "all in my head". I would scratch at my arms and my thighs digging in the corners of my thumbnails. Sometimes I would prick myself with a sewing needle and squeeze the blood out. The more I bled the more relief I felt. I began to understand medieval medicines love of leeches. Maybe it is possible to drain out all that ails a person in their blood. After I'd moved out of my mother's house I escalated to the use of exacto knives; clean deep lines that bled so easily I had to stand naked in the shower when I cut myself. Then I would turn on the water and wash and not care that the soap was stinging my arms because the pain of the flesh never compared with what I felt on the inside. And this gave me more than distraction, it somehow alleviated the pressure. Finally I would cry and when I was done crying I'd get out of the shower dry off and put on something with long dark sleeves.

This night sitting in the dark unable to cry I genuinely missed the blade, probably the same way a drunk misses the drink when they're past the point of coping. I'm a respectable suburban housewife now. I can't have any secrets engraved in my flesh, I can't cry in front of the children and apparently I can't cry when I want to either.

My thoughts wandered back to the dear sweet woman whose memorial I'd been attending. All the years I'd known her I don't think I ever told her what was wrong, or even if anything was wrong. She had a knack though for knowing and saying something seemingly vague that would put my problems back into perspective. I didn't need to tell her, and she didn't really need to know but she seemed able to fix it anyway. Feeling sorry for yourself just wasn't an option in her presence, but I was sitting there feeling sorry for myself anyway. She was gone and there weren't going to be any more off the cuff pep talks.

I was choked up and still unable to cry and silently begging the universe to tell me how to deal with all of this. Then I heard a voice not unlike hers say "Sing". That was all I heard even though I listened really hard trying to tell if the voice had been in my head, or in the room or outside somewhere. I wondered if I'd spoken my woes out loud and someone passing by had answered me. I wondered if the voice I heard was hers or mine or if God was a soprano. Then I decided it was the only answer I had, the source wasn't important. So I sang. I sang the first thing that came to my mind.

"Ay, ay, ay, ay
Canta y no llores
Porque cantando se allegran
cielito lindo, los corazones"

I'm not much of a singer to begin with and I was singing very softly so as not to wake my friend and having a hard time figuring out how random mariachi tunes were going to change my life. I've never really understood the lyrics to this song as a whole. Still there was something profound in that moment. "Canta y no llores" translates to "sing and don't cry". So if the song was the answer then it didn't matter that I didn't know any healthy ways to let myself cry. Maybe I didn't have to cry it out, or bleed it out, I could sing it all out of me. But again I'm not much of a singer. My friend was though. She had an exceptional voice and she used it well and often.

I was thinking that maybe "sing" was the answer for her, for someone who's got a gift for it. Her voice moved so many people. Mine at best would move people away, far away. Besides I didn't know the rest of the words to the only song I could think of and I didn't want to sit there mumbling the chorus until sunrise. I could almost remember something about a black-eyed woman from the mountains, or maybe it was a woman from the black mountains. I just don't know the words. That's when it occurred to me that maybe it was the words that mattered. I have no talent for music, but I know how to work with words. I know how to write down my pain. Suddenly I got it. I knew I couldn't let the hurting fester, but I was only thinking of bodily ways to let it flow out. It hadn't occurred to me that it can come out in a voice and it can come out onto paper.

I had always felt certain that this woman who tolerated no pity parties, who was so adverse to people feeling sorry for themselves, had felt more than her share of pain. She never complained though. She sang. The night of her memorial I realized that these two facts were probably related. Who would've thought that I could find the answer to my prayers in a mariachi tune.

If you have any comments or questions regarding this site and its content  e-mail me

Unless otherwise noted all photos and writing belong to Crystal Torres