Open Ribs

I almost never cry these days. While I generally think this is a good sign of things being alright in my life, when I do cry it is BIG. Well... that's not exactly true. Thanks to my female hormones I get teary eyed at stupid things way more often then I would like to admit. But generally, I don't consider myself too emotional. But when it all builds up it's a massive, all flood gates down kind of situation. It's usually really cathartic, and for someone who can be kind of a control freak, it's nice to make my inner monologue shut the fuck up for a little while and just feel things, no matter how upsetting it may be.

I was never a big crier as a kid, so this isn't much of a surprise. I was happy and I'm grateful that aside from the every day kind of kid stuff that makes you feel like the sky is collapsing on your 4th grade head (until it's recess), generally things were good. But I did have a pretty fantastic system for giving myself a little needed release now and then. Myself and one of my best childhood friends, Jamie would have massive, I mean EPIC, screaming contests (I'm still so sorry Mom and Dad). Now in today's world I would imagine that the blood curdling cries of young children over and over would evoke at least some concern from the neighbors, but in 1995 no one seemed to care. We would go out and lie down in my driveway, open up our little ribcages as wide as we could and just let it out. I don't think we really ever cared who won, if we did I don't remember because it usually ended in a giggle fit. There is this type of therapy called Primal Therapy, and the treatment employed is basically just screaming your head off (amongst a lot of spin-off Freudian analysis and repressed memory digging). I think Jamie and I were just way ahead of our time. If I could get away with walking out onto my porch in my crowded greater Boston neighborhood and having a massive cathartic shriek I would, but I just don't think it would fly.

Still, have you ever noticed how little kids are always making noise when they are doing things? If they are skipping they are humming and skipping, or if they are jumping they are punctuating it with some vocalization or if they are running it definitely involves some kind of increasingly loud vowel. I think they're onto something. Maybe if we made more noise throughout the day it wouldn't all have to come bursting out of us when our guard is down?

I don't remember if there was anything in particular we were screaming about. My Mom said that I made up for in sound what I lacked in size and maybe as two tiny blonde little girls we just wanted to feel big and noticed and important for a minute. Or maybe it was to shake up our perfect suburban lives. I would still like to shake up my life, though now more urban and I would still like to feel bigger than my 5 foot 2 frame will allow. I'd still really like to be able to scream. One of my friend's told me that sometimes she drives around town with the windows up and just yells and yells and yells. I think this is a genius idea. Most of Massachusetts seems to be doing that anyways to some extent.