I've been bestowed with several titles throughout my years, the most popular of which are variations on the theme 'Ice Queen' or 'Emotional Zombie'.
True, I've never been one to wear my heart on my sleeve—years of being a girl taught me how dangerous it was—but of course I had feelings! Thanks to several traumatic high school dramas, I learnt to bottle up those things called feelings, which was really more nuisance than I’d care to bother with. Besides, I would not allow myself to be associated with something resembling an after-school special during those years full of pubescent angst.
Now however, several years later and free from all that adolescent rage and anguish, I find myself having trouble with these things called feelings. Perhaps I’ve bottled too much of it those 7-odd years that now it’s threatening to explode. In fact, every time I try to suppress an emotion it seems to make things worse. Having no other outlet, the feeling I tried to restrain has nowhere to go except out of my eyeballs.
Thus ends my reign as the notorious Ice-Queen.
I feel so much nowadays, it takes next to nothing to make me cry. I explode into hot angry tears when I’m tired, tear up with rage, shed sympathetic/emphatic tears in movies, and even snivel at songs. Though, it has to be said that those songs…they are very emotional songs. Seriously. For example, who doesn’t cry at Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite? Or to the Schindler’s List theme song performed by fiddler-maestro Itzhak Perlman? Really? You don’t? Are you an EMOTIONAL ZOMBIE?!
I am still proud that I am able to hold a decent conversation without bawling. That has to be commended.
I blame my emotional anarchy on my lineage, particularly my maternal roots. Legend has it my mother once bawled at a commercial. It’s no secret though that she cries at every movie she watches, even crying her eyes out for three hours straight once the credits rolled in that first LotR movie, not stopping even when fixing us Bolognese sauce to go with our spaghetti.
At a family reunion (probably Hari Raya), someone popped in a Hindi movie, and all the women in my family (on my mother’s side) wept together for a good solid two hours plus—all! My aunts, my girl cousins, even my grandma—they were all united in their blubbering solidarity, in the camaraderie of passing the tissue-box around and snivelling together. I have never been a part of that—this emotional rampage is something I gained recently—but now, I too can join in the sniffing and tissue-box pass-the-parcel!
So, pop in that Kabhi Kuchi Kabhi Gham I say, and bring that tub of keropok. Oh yes, and don’t forget that tissue box.
Post-script: See if YOU don’t cry to this song!
Per Te. Performed by Josh Groban.
True, I've never been one to wear my heart on my sleeve—years of being a girl taught me how dangerous it was—but of course I had feelings! Thanks to several traumatic high school dramas, I learnt to bottle up those things called feelings, which was really more nuisance than I’d care to bother with. Besides, I would not allow myself to be associated with something resembling an after-school special during those years full of pubescent angst.
Now however, several years later and free from all that adolescent rage and anguish, I find myself having trouble with these things called feelings. Perhaps I’ve bottled too much of it those 7-odd years that now it’s threatening to explode. In fact, every time I try to suppress an emotion it seems to make things worse. Having no other outlet, the feeling I tried to restrain has nowhere to go except out of my eyeballs.
Thus ends my reign as the notorious Ice-Queen.
I feel so much nowadays, it takes next to nothing to make me cry. I explode into hot angry tears when I’m tired, tear up with rage, shed sympathetic/emphatic tears in movies, and even snivel at songs. Though, it has to be said that those songs…they are very emotional songs. Seriously. For example, who doesn’t cry at Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite? Or to the Schindler’s List theme song performed by fiddler-maestro Itzhak Perlman? Really? You don’t? Are you an EMOTIONAL ZOMBIE?!
I am still proud that I am able to hold a decent conversation without bawling. That has to be commended.
I blame my emotional anarchy on my lineage, particularly my maternal roots. Legend has it my mother once bawled at a commercial. It’s no secret though that she cries at every movie she watches, even crying her eyes out for three hours straight once the credits rolled in that first LotR movie, not stopping even when fixing us Bolognese sauce to go with our spaghetti.
At a family reunion (probably Hari Raya), someone popped in a Hindi movie, and all the women in my family (on my mother’s side) wept together for a good solid two hours plus—all! My aunts, my girl cousins, even my grandma—they were all united in their blubbering solidarity, in the camaraderie of passing the tissue-box around and snivelling together. I have never been a part of that—this emotional rampage is something I gained recently—but now, I too can join in the sniffing and tissue-box pass-the-parcel!
So, pop in that Kabhi Kuchi Kabhi Gham I say, and bring that tub of keropok. Oh yes, and don’t forget that tissue box.
Post-script: See if YOU don’t cry to this song!
Per Te. Performed by Josh Groban.
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