This next submission is a beautiful piece by Leah Thomison! Thank you Leah!
If you show up with flowers to my choir concert, I will cry. I don’t care if you got them from your backyard or the most expensive flower shop in town. I will run up to you with the tightest embrace and tell you to wait a good thirty seconds before getting pictures. My ate. If you tell me that I am your person, I will cry. You cry with me and we sit by the water, a perfect shot from a coming-of-age film, and we laugh about it with wet cheeks. My best friend. If you come and surprise me by coming home for the weekend to see me, I will cry. You laugh at me because I am in shock and just so happy. My forever director. If you tell me you’re proud of me I will cry. Even if you barely know me, you are who I look up to. My goal.
If you tell me my best friend’s dad is sick, I will cry. The person who calls me angry because I didn’t text to say I arrived safe after driving for three hours straight; who told me to check my oil and I just lied that I did to make him feel like I was safe. The man who called me ‘Baby Cheeks’ everytime I walked through the door. The man who I am extremely angry at for putting the people I love the most in so much pain. My second father. If you tell me that students were killed in a school shooting, I will cry. People my age are suffering. You are my enemy.
If you tell me, I can’t be myself in any way, I will cry. I believe that if you feel like crying, no matter the circumstance, you should.
For me, growing up with an immigrant mother and an emotionally absent father you learn some things real quick. You learn that if you get scolded, you can’t cry. Why are you crying? That’s what they always ask. You are so blessed. You have no reason to cry. Getting called “sensitive” or “crybaby” every time a tear streamed down my face.
But why? Crying is such a natural response. It is literally the body’s way to show its emotions. I will flat out say that it is B.S. to tell someone how to feel. So I will tell my friends, a stranger, my future children, I will shout it at the top of my lungs. CRY! Cry as if it is your last day on Earth. Cry as if you are so filled with joy it is your only way to let it out. Cry as if nothing is wrong. But, please feel free to cry.
Leah is a senior at Curtis Senior High School and in the fall will be attending University of Puget Sound. In her free time she is an active member in her school’s theater department and involved in AAPI activities in the community as a proud Filipino-American.
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