good morning!

anyways this post is about whether crying makes me feel good or bad. one would superficially think that crying is a “bad” thing, because that’s how we’ve always been taught as a kid. “oh no, look you made them / her / him cry. you can’t do that kind of stuff”. so crying has a bad association.

yet like i keep saying, (human) life needs both laughter and crying, just like plants need both sunshine and rainfall.¹ And even when i feel like shaking from the emotions; i still recognize that this is what life is supposed to be all about; having all the emotions, including the “bad” ones. it’s just in our modern times that we’ve saught an imbalance in things, but that’s neither sustainable nor right.

idk whether you can understand these thoughts; but they came to me while i contemplated whether i should post “i can cry again” into the trans_joy community. is it “joy”? i would say yes, but a deeper, less superficial type of joy than when one’s laughing. it’s not so much a superficial expression of joy, but a deeper feeling that things are right.

unrelated stuff about the german language

[1]: the german phrase is “Sonnenschein und Regen”, it’s a beautiful phrase. i’m saying this because i kinda think that while people enjoy shitting on the german language a lot (deservedly) for all its Artikel and grammatical complexity, some phrases and words are actually outright beautiful, and this is one of them.

  • Squished Fly (she/they)@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    3·
    3 days ago

    I’m gonna take this on a tangent and say that, while I don’t agree that german is a beautiful language, I still love it. For me at least, articulating my feelings is sooo much easier in English. When I try it in German it feels just wrong.

    German, however, is the most beautiful language for anything technical. The fact that we can plop words together to our liking makes so many things so much easier. Take the word “friction” - “Reibungswiderstand” for example. Reibungswiderstand basically just consists of Reibung (rubbing) and wiederstand (resistance). Rubbing resistance basically already describes what the word itself is, instead of needing a new word.

    • Valerie Ashborne@feddit.orgEnglish
      2·
      3 days ago

      I don’t agree that german is a beautiful language

      I recently got a chance to talk here, on Lemmy, with a German, who describe German language as, and I quote:

      “But german itself sounds like two machine-guns having sex.”

  • Domi@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    5·
    4 days ago

    Crying is the shit, I love it so much. Never was able to before hrt and now I’ll cry for an hour for almost any reason and it feels great.

  • Valerie Ashborne@feddit.orgEnglish
    2·
    3 days ago

    for all its Artikel and grammatical complexity

    For people who are already know languages that are gendered and quite complex (which is true for… Quite a lot of languages actually) this is not a hard part. Most of the stuff is already exist in other languages in one way or shape. You just need to wire concepts from your language to German, which surprisingly is working, for the most part.

    The problem is, that most of this concept in German language does not rely on some logic to follow or consistency, but rather RULES, EXEMPTIONS TO RULES, and remembering everything, because it is the only way.

    Example of this is gendered words aka Artikels. You have words Apfel. That’s it. How do you know it is “he”? You don’t, you need to remember. You don’t have anything to guess or using simple solution to deduct gender. There is one oh many rules like “alcoholic beverages are him” with exception of beer because it is “it”. And that is how it work in German language.

    Recently we started learning such weird concept as “verbs of moving” which determine if it going to be “ich habe etwas gekauften” or “ich bin nach Hause gekommen”. How to I differentiate? I do not know, but apparently “tanzen” is not about moving, despite the idea of dance is to move, so it is “habe”, not “bin” ☹️

    Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

  • carin_heron@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    4·
    3 days ago

    Oh my god yes, it’s like I was cut off from an entire realm of emotional and bodily understanding. I felt these emotions the entire time (and worse), but there was no way of externalizing them.

    • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.orgEnglish
      2·
      3 days ago

      Oh yes, the “boys don’t cry” notion of patriarchy. Men who always get angry instead of sad are often powertripping or violent but mostvof them are victims of the system, in a way…

      I’m sorry you had to feel the system treating you as a man and imposing such limits but I’m glad you found your solution.

      • carin_heron@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        2·
        3 days ago

        I don’t even know if it was the gendered element of crying. Certainly that was an element, but I’ve never really wanted or cared about appearing masculine enough beyond like, understanding I’d be punished for defying those norms. The way we teach and allow men to defend themselves often also forces them to use aggression and anger, or they’ll be left to defend themselves from other men who take gentleness as weakness, and are always anxious about their position in the hierarchy. Unfortunately, even if you live in a place that allows some marginal deviation from those gendered norms, most men are kind of stuck with other men, and if you don’t get along with them (as many trans women obviously don’t), you’re defending yourself a lot. So, it’s also just a survival coping mechanism to use anger over sadness when these are emotions that are so often interlinked and cooperative.

        I honestly have just always had a hard time crying, even when I wanted to. I mentioned it elsewhere on this thread, but it felt like there was a literal block in my eyes that kept me from doing it. Being trans just also makes you have to clamp up a lot, and maybe there’s a psychosomatic element in how much relief you can safely indulge in before you’re in danger. I don’t want to discount the gendered socialization by any means, I know we all have to suffer through untangling that from ourselves, but it is always tough to tell if I had internalized a behaviour, or adopted one to secure my own sense of identity (like not getting along with men because I refused to be like them, and did not let them behave the way they all let each other behave).

        • gandalf_die_12te@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOPEnglish
          1·
          2 days ago

          The way we teach and allow men to defend themselves often also forces them to use aggression and anger, or they’ll be left to defend themselves from other men who take gentleness as weakness, and are always anxious about their position in the hierarchy.

          very accurate, i’ve met multiple people who think exactly that way. very sad to watch, i’ve tried to explain to them that it makes no sense because it puts society into a downward spiral. i probably won’t meet most of them again so i can’t tell whether my words had any effect.

        • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.orgEnglish
          2·
          2 days ago

          I’m not saying anyone transitioned because of crying, there’s always a lot more to it… Frankly, while transition does offer catharsis from norms of masculinity, it was silly of me to think of it as a “solution”, like some incels do (eww). As appealing as it sounds, it’s almost certainly not for me.

          Thank you for the perspective. Very well said, and you are brave for sharing such personal aspects of your life.

          felt like there was a literal block in my eyes

          This hits close to home… I’d say, personally, my largest “crying blockers” were antidepressants. The level of discomfort to start crying is so high… I feel I can make it lower with practice though, and Mom seems to understand what crying means now. She used to mock me! Don’t forget that even woman-led households (like mine and both my parents’) can enforce harmful standards of patriarchy.

  • nikki@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    6·
    4 days ago

    crying is a good thing to me, what causes me to cry can be good, bad, mundane, whatever. but being able to cry again is universally amazing to me, it releases my emotions instead of bottling them up against my will

  • mika june [she|her]@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    5·
    4 days ago

    good morning!

    absolutely agree. i love a good cry. it’s the physical aspect of a powerful emotional release. j think feelings are kinda like magic. no wonder patriarchy is so against genuine emotional expression.

    i’m just guessing assuming the german words are cognates, but does that translate to sunshine and rain? if so, i love that!

    have a beautiful day