Sometimes I cry on purpose

And sometimes, I wish there was an easier way

I keep getting dysregulated and I don’t like it.

It started in 2024 when I decided to start sitting with my feelings.

Actually, it probably started around 2019, when I applied for VA disability.

Or maybe it was 2016, when I left the house and flew to another state so I could go to my niece’s wedding.

Or 2008, when I started getting restless at work, before I got fired and my entire world came crashing down.

Or maybe 2003, when I got PTSD when my ship deployed to the Gulf in war time.

Or maybe when I was 15 years old, and would randomly burst into tears, hanging out with my friends and suddenly feeling very frightened, and overwhelmed, for absolutely no good reason…

But I don’t think it started happening this often until sometime around 2024 or so.

It got worse during the second half of 2024, as I started reaching for more growth, more success, more achievement — more “me-ness.”

For most of the 15 years from 2009 to 2024, I kept myself too numb to be able to feel dysregulated…

But then I started wanting more out of life…

And I couldn’t just keep shutting down anymore, every time things got uncomfortable.

I wanted better results — and I was just starting to believe I could have better results! And I was journaling daily, crying daily, getting out of the apartment daily, trying so hard to connect with other people!

But I didn’t know what I was doing.

I didn’t know how to make the changes I wanted, and do it in healthy ways that would support the new lifestyle I was trying so desperately to step into…

So I got dysregulated, and I stayed there.

A lot.

A lot a lot.

I was confronting a lot of the things I’ve tried to run from, my whole life… so that was good. Or at least, I thought it was good. But the way I was going about it was messing me up… and I feel like I should’ve known I wasn’t doing it right.

But how could I?

I didn’t have a fraction of the coping skills I’m learning today.

By my own estimation, I quit engaging with life when I was around 15 years old. I just checked out. I stopped learning. Stopped trying. Stopped wanting to fight back against all the problems life kept throwing at me.

So for 34 years, I’ve been moving through life with the emotional awareness of a scared, frustrated, confused 15-year-old boy. That was the place from where I faced all of life’s problems.

So of course I messed things up sometimes…

(Actually, I still think I messed things up all the time… but that’s kind of a moot point.)

2024 was the first time I consciously chose to stop running… to stop avoiding… and try to learn to start accepting what has happened to me, and what I haven’t done about it…

And try to start learning a better way.

Because I knew, all along, the way I was facing the world wasn’t working for me.

But I never knew I could face the world, any other way than the way I’d been taught at 15 years old.

True story.

I believed that was who I am… and you can’t change who you are…

What you think, what you feel, how you behave — maybe even what kind of music you listen to (although as I write this I’m grooving to Guns N Roses, so…)

Those things, you can change.

But I think who you are, underneath the thoughts, the feelings, the behavior, attitudes, beliefs, insecurities, music choices (they will always be my favorite band and I will fight people on this…)

Who you are is eternal, and unchanging.

And I went through life, for 34 years, mistakenly believing I am the 15-year-old version of me who’s afraid of everything and resents everyone and life is never going to give me what I want because I’m a coward and a pretender and I’ve cut myself off from my own values and identity and there is no coming back from the horrible choices I’ve made and the terrible things I’ve done…

When the truth is, none of that is who I am.

It’s just things I believe about myself, that aren’t true.

But I believed it so strongly, for so long… I feel like it became my identity.

Or, at least, it became how I viewed the world, and my own place in it.

And 2024 is about when I really started to challenge that, and try to change it, and overcome it.

I say try because I legitimately did not know what I was doing, in 2024.

I’d spent so many years keeping myself numb, I thought if I just made myself feel everything… that alone would fix me.

So every day, I’d sit and I’d journal about things that were upsetting me, whether past events, or present. And every day, I’d get so worked up, I’d cry hard enough to sweat through my clothes… and loud enough that I’m still surprised no one in my apartment complex ever called in a welfare check on me.

(If you haven’t noticed, I am a bit of a loud personality. Usually, I like that about myself… but not so much when it comes to crying. I feel like I’d rather be the type who cries quietly, in secret, and nobody ever has any idea I’m doing it… but for better or worse, that’s just not who I am.)

I kept purposely making myself upset, believing if I could just bring everything up to the surface, I’d get better.

But the way I was going about it, everything just kept getting worse.

I knew how to dig stuff up — and I got better at it every time I’d journal and sit with those ugly emotions! But I didn’t know, yet, what to do with it all, after digging it up. So every day, I brought up more and more pain, and every day, it just accumulated.

I wasn’t numb anymore, but I still wasn’t getting anything out.

It went on like that until August of 2025, when I went to the mental hospital.

Looking back, I can see that I was doing something wrong, to end up in that mental-emotional state. But when I was admitted to the hospital, I believed there was something wrong with me, as a human being. And that was hard to deal with.

I got dysregulated on a daily basis during the 6 or 7 weeks I spent in the hospital. Once a day, I would go to my room, and sit in bed and sob, for hours on end. I’d tremble, and scream, and sweat through my hospital scrubs…

And at first, I thought I was going out of my mind.

But eventually… I started to realize that the more I cried in the hospital, the better I felt.

I was becoming more calm; more clear-headed; more centered. I was starting to look at my problems through a different lens. The way I interacted with the other patients, and with the hospital staff, started to change.

I started to believe I was worth saving — that I was worth fighting for.

I continued to cry every day when I left the hospital, but outside of the safety and security of a hospital setting, it wasn’t the same. I got overwhelmed again, and questioned my worth and my identity, and told myself I was doing everything wrong…

Until I went to residential treatment in San Antonio. There, I felt safe to cry everything out again, and I got to learn real coping skills, to help me move through all the things that were making me cry all the time, and making me think that suicide was a viable option.

I spent a lot of my time in San Antonio feeling dysregulated, and out of control.

But I also spent a lot of time allowing myself to feel dysregulated, and out of control. And I started to notice something remarkable:

Sometimes, when I cry, I am dysregulated. I am overwhelmed to the point that I don’t have any control over my emotions. And I need to drop everything, and cry it all out — all the way down to the roots, if necessary — in order to restore balance.

But sometimes… sometimes when I cry, I’m allowing myself to feel the emotion, and let it run its course, and it’s still painful and still feels overwhelming — but I’m actually in control of the process.

And I don’t think it’s fair to me, to label those moments as being dysregulated. Because when I’m in control, and I choose to let myself cry, I’m not dysregulated in that moment. In fact, I’m doing something very healthy by getting those emotions out, and giving myself freedom to feel what I need to feel.

But there’s still a lot of moments when I know I’m not in control; when I’m so overwhelmed my body just takes over and forces me to cry it all out, whether I want to or not.

And those are the times I don’t like, even though I can admit that they’re also necessary.

Because those painful emotions I’ve been avoiding my whole life? They do need to come out, in order for me to start moving forward. I can’t confront something I’m not even willing to let happen.

But I don’t like it, at all. And I wish there was an easier way.