Crying Over Fiction, Not Reality

Isn’t it strange how we rarely cry when life hits us the hardest?

Something awful happens—we lose someone, we get hurt, we feel abandoned—and yet we stay dry-eyed. Maybe we’re too stunned. Maybe we’re trying to be “strong.” Maybe we just don’t know how to cry in the moment.

So we carry it. Quietly. We go on with life like we’re fine, piling grief on top of confusion, anger on top of silence.

Tears, though? Tears are like guests at a formal event—they wait patiently at the door, unsure if it’s the right time to enter. But when fiction plays the right music, they finally step in, uninvited but welcomed, dancing their way down our cheeks.

We read a novel. Watch a movie. Hear a song. And suddenly, we’re sobbing—for a character, a scene, a line in a song we’ve heard a hundred times.

But we’re not really crying for them. We’re crying for ourselves. For everything we’ve kept locked away. The heartbreak we didn’t know how to process. The goodbye we never got to say.

Sometimes, fiction gives us the permission real life never does—to feel, to fall apart, to finally let go.

And maybe that’s okay. Maybe that’s healing, in disguise.