It's hard to end a relationship. It becomes even more difficult when the person whom will be going away knows you so well that they can read every downward glance, every sigh in the dark, every facial tic as easily as a toddler flipping the cardboard pages of a book about barnyard animals.
On the other hand, it makes breaking into tears at a pizza place much less awkward.
Which is where I found myself Friday night. Ten minutes before, we'd been sitting outdoors with friends from the film festival I used to work for - saying hi to people passing by from one theater to the next, drinking wine under the stars. We made plans to meet friends for drinks after our next film screening. We shared slices of an extra pizza with volunteers rushing between tasks. I picked at the salad our friend left after she hurried back to emcee a Q&A.
As it began to rain, the restaurant emptied. Festival-goers gathered up programs and rushed to get to the theater before the rain became worse. Families gathered up children, plates, and toys and poured inside.
Me, deep in the contentment of being surrounded by people I cared about and basking in the seemingly smooth shifting of relationship parameters, merely scooted my chair under the eaves and decided to wait out the rain. Which had, it seems, become my go-to strategy for dealing with my life.
Ignore the chaos pouring down and seek the easiest shelter.
As it became apparent, in all instances, that the easy shelter under the eaves wasn't going to cut it, we ran inside.
And I began to cry.
It doesn't really matter what I was crying about. Sadness. Self-awareness at a vulnerable moment. Love for the person sitting across from me; the person whose eyes were also welling up. Fear that as much as we said we'd always be in each other's lives, maybe that wouldn't be the case. The realization that our seemingly amorphous decision to "take a break" seemed to be taking on a distinct, jagged shape left me relieved and uncertain.
And I knew that there would be more tears in more restaurants and bars before this all ended. I'm a great bar crier. At times, I'm like a country song come to life. Give me a whiskey, a jukebox and a bad day, and I'm good to go for a few hours. The darker the bar, the stronger the whiskey, the sadder the song, the happier (through my tears) I am.
I'm not a gasper of air when I cry, nor do I wail "I just have to powder my nose" while making a mad dash to the restroom.
I just sit there, tears quietly falling in the dark and I contemplate all the tiny sadnesses in my life at that moment. I'm at one with the history of heartbreak in the bar - in quiet camaraderie with those who've gone before.
There are bars in China where people pay upwards of $6 an hour, plus drinks, to sob far away from the eyes of their families. If I've doubted for one moment the panic over China's superiority over the U.S., it's now apparent that I was wrong. Crying bars are clearly the sign of an advanced society.
It's going to be a while, if ever, before I find someone who can embrace this most socially unacceptable of all my socially unacceptable traits.
Yours are not easy shoes to fill, my pal.
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