making_people_cry kerry is not something i ever imagined would be a victory. only in this context, in this little square room where i sit in a gray armchair wearing a sweatshirt and birkenstock clogs and they sit on the loveseat about six feet away, facing the bamboo ottoman covered in plants and my jacket hung on a hook on the door and the silent clock and the benign wall art--bits of recycled paper rolled up and formed into circles that brian picked out, god he loves circles, and a black and white street map of philly that i got online--there is the hum of the white noise machine, occasional city sounds like sirens or car horns or the crowds of protesters at city hall, someone gets too close to a feeling, or sometimes we call it a hole, or a void, depending on its temperature and how clearly we can see it, whether we are running towards it or running away from it i may say that sounds incredibly painful or do you take your feelings seriously? or can you really know someone if you don't want them to know who you truly are? and it is not a script or a game, they are not puppets or characters, i am just gesturing to pull back a curtain or handing them a shovel (and sometimes not even a shovel but a spoon, or tweezers) and that is often when the crying happens. rarely wracking sobs, most of us save that for the safety of our bedrooms or showers or our cars, more likely a tear, or a bright sheen that makes pale blue eyes gleam, or just pink eyelids that lower a bit but not altogether because if you keep your eyes open you are still there in the room and if you close them you are going into yourself, into a scary place i have been told that people leave my office and sob in the hallway and i try not to schedule a session before someone goes to work because then they tell me they had to wait tables feeling like they had no skin so yeah, it is not a flex or a goal, more like "ah, there is something there that you did not want to look at too closely," and my hope is that crying is not going to make them turn away, but turn towards, because that is where change happens. 240330 what's it to you? who go blather from