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Cried Out

Reading this Emily Dickinson poem made me think about how people don't have many tears left to cry after a point in their life. It seems to be related to time spent living in the world combined with the total amount of pain experienced - from micro-aggressions to tumultuous, calamitous event induced pain. People have a certain reservoir of tears they can cry and once those are cried out, pain and sadness are experienced in tearless (and often unhealthier ways).

If the stillness is Volcanic

In the human face

When upon a pain Titanic

Features keep their place —


If at length the smouldering anguish

Will not overcome —

And the palpitating Vineyard

In the dust, be thrown?

I could imagine the pain breaking a person from inside until they are blown to figurative dust. My friend A has suffered disproportionately later in her 50s than she did ever before. But there had been enough pain till then for her in her life to be all cried out. It is true for her that "upon a pain Titanic Features keep -their place -"

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