They say women cry when they’re sad, cry when they’re happy, and sometimes cry for no reason at all.
Have you heard of crying while laughing? I bet you’ve done it once or twice, or if you’re easily amused, many times in your life.
Me too!
Except I don’t simply shed a tear or two. I shed buckets.
This is me laughing:
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HAAAAAA aaa aaa uuhhh HU HU HU HU HU HUUUUUUHHHHHHH (gulping down huge breaths and bawling like a baby).
I don’t know exactly why it happens to me.
But the first time it happened, it was because my boyfriend was tickling me. I was giggling uncontrollably, but I was NOT liking it. In fact I was begging him to stop but he wouldn’t. And so, my uncontrollable giggling turned into uncontrollable sobbing, heaving shoulders and all, my palms pressed over my tearstained face. Gim just stopped and looked at me, puzzled. He thought I was faking it at first but then he realized it was for real.
It was a little embarrassing for him, too, because we were in my room and my mom and sisters were just outside. The walls are thin in our house.
So he hushed me and stroked my arms and hugged me as I bawled on his shoulders, and we stayed like that for a few minutes, until I gradually stopped hyperventilating and my sobs became quieter and I finally stopped crying.
Ever since then, if I laugh too much – especially the out of control type of laughter – it very easily turns into a bawl.
Example: When Gim cracks his cheesy jokes and then I’m laughing at him instead of the joke!
The weird part is that when I’m laughing, I really am simply amused. (Gim no longer tickles me, he’s learned since not to!) But when it turns into crying, it is very emotional for me. I cry the same way I cried the moment the doctors pronounced my father dead, in the hospital.
How do I describe it? It’s like the physical act of laughing triggers all this emotion in me. All this emotion overwhelms me and I can’t help it and it’s released through the bawling.
I feel pretty embarrassed after I cry. But it’s very cathartic. Literally I just release all the pent-up emotion inside me. And that feels GOOD.
It still happens to me, randomly. Gim can induce it if he wants, by doing something to make laugh really hard. But he doesn’t, because he worries about me. I don’t know if it means anything significant, medically. Once in the middle of a fit he got me a paper bag to breathe into. I don’t know if it helped. I still cried buckets.
It still happens randomly. Like this morning. I tried to suppress the tears. Though they came, but I didn’t release them all and I tried my best to tamp down the heaving. Because Gim was late to work and I didn’t want to keep him. I felt a little cheated, after. I didn’t get my feel-good release. 🙁
So, there. It just boggles me why it happens.
Has this ever happened to you???
