Reading a friend's journal entry the other day made me think about crying. You know, since she was talking about tears. Funny, huh?

I sort of like crying. Not sobbing-crying, because that makes my head hurt the next day (I always refer to this as a crying headache - can anyone relate?) unless I remember to rehyrate before falling asleep. That also leaves me with puffy eyes, which is oh-so-unattractive. No, not that...but just crying.

I haven't cried in a while and that is a little weird. Or maybe I'm just weird. I feel as though I need to cry every so often. Sometimes, when it has been awhile, I'll just start crying - for no known reason other than it has been too long since the last time I cried.

One of my favorite quotes is, evidently, not a quote at all. I don't know. Maybe someone out there can help me. I mean, I *thought* it was a quote, but as I search for the author of it ('cause I like to give credit where credit is due) it seems that portions of it came from a quote and others just got added to it by persons unknown.

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There was a time in my life that I shed a number of tears. Well, truth be told, there've been a few of those times...I guess the older one gets, the more times there'll be. I'm not saying that the tears weren't warranted. I think they were. Considering the circumstances, I don't think the number of tears was inordinate. But there were, perhaps, people whom I encountered who didn't agree.

A good friend of mine sent the following, upon seeing me in what had become a 'normal state' for me - one of tears:

"There is a sacredness in tears; they are the deliverers of grief, of overwhelming sadness and of feelings so strong that words would surely diminish their true emotion. They are the keepers of ecstasy and they are the messengers of unspeakable love."

~Unknown

This, evidently, is where part of the quote came from - and it is certainly elegant and beautiful in its own right, to be sure. I just wonder where the rest came from. I sort of fell in love with that quote above...even though it isn't 'authentic.' Did my friend simply mis-quote the following? Did she add the rest on her own, knowingly? Or is there another quote out there that I don't know about?

"There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love."

~ Washington Irving

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Have you ever noticed that some people get really uncomfortable around crying? Why is that? Why should crying be something that you have to do alone? We don't think that we should have to laugh alone. In fact, when we laugh alone, we sometimes attract strange looks. Crying? Just the opposite.

Ah, well...I don't really know where I'm going with this entry. I need a good cry.

Anyone feel like making me sad?

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Something to think about: "If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one." ~Mother Teresa