How Crying Reconnected Me With Who I Used to Be
Leon Macfayden
Helping individuals with PTSD or depression build resilience, sustainable habits, and routines.
I used to cry over road kill. We’d taken my dog for a walk, and on the way back, my dad spotted a dead but intact pheasant. He decided it shouldn’t go to waste and picked it up, intending to take it home, prepare it, and eat it.
His plans were derailed when he heard me sobbing in the back of the car. I couldn’t stand the idea of him gutting and killing an already dead bird. He gave in because he loved me, and the bird was cast aside to rot.
It made no sense at all. In my defense, I was about 13 years old, but this extreme level of sensitivity was my character.
It’s good to be empathic. Society improves if people care about others and the world around them.
But there’s a limit.
You have to balance empathy with being able to function in the world. Sometimes, you must switch off from the badness and count your blessings. You have to accept horrendous things happen and that you can’t do anything about most of them.
Most people either ignore roadkill, or comment on its sadness and then move on.?Having a meltdown over it and letting potential food go to waste is a worrying sign.
The good side of sensitivity.
My sensitivity was a blessing as well as a curse. I became a volunteer with the Samaritans, listening to people enduring the entire gamut of suffering. I couldn’t get enough of this work, and sometimes, I’d talk to the same person for four hours or more. I don’t know if I stopped anyone from taking their own lives, but I do know I helped a few people feel better.
I went on to study to become a therapist.
I remember working in an off-license (Americans may know this as a 7–11). I worked late and alone in a rough part of town. Rumors spread that a woman was prowling the streets, wearing only a long coat and flashing passersby. She would proposition men to go home with her for sex.
One night, I found this was no rumor. She came into my store and asked me outright if I wanted to go home with her for sex. She added that she had “whips and chains” to sweeten the deal. I declined, but a young guy overheard and asked if he could go. She said yes and went away with him and his friend.
I wondered what her story was, as it’s rare for a woman to expose herself and proposition random strangers. After a few weeks, she came back in. Luckily, the shop was empty, so I had time to talk to her. I asked about her life, and she began to cry. She said she’d had a miscarriage, which she couldn’t get over, and sex was the only way for her to feel anything.
We talked for an hour, and no other customers came in and interrupted our deep talk. She thanked me for listening to her and telling me how much better she felt being able to open up.
I wonder if she stopped her self-destructive search for a connection. I feel honored that she chose to speak to me and never saw her again — I see that as a good sign.
Sensitivity took me down a dangerous path.
By age 23, I knew I was good at listening to people. My love of helping others and my desire to test myself and prove I was no longer soft led me to join the police.
Policing gives you the potential to help others. I’ve talked people out of taking their lives, saved them from assaults, and rescued them from accidents. But most of the time, policing isn’t like that. Most of the time, the people you’re dealing with hate you. You have to force yourself into situations where no one wants you, and you might make the whole thing worse.
You usually do tedious, trivial work in the revolving door justice system. You arrest the same people repeatedly and spend hours filling in forms. If you’re lucky enough to get someone as far as the court, they get a pathetic sentence and get sent back out on the streets. You’ll arrest them again a few days later and go through this over and over.?Many criminals will grow up and age alongside you. After 20 years, the children of the criminals you used to arrest will take the reigns, and it all begins again.
Seeing misery and suffering every day hardened me in a way I didn’t expect.?At first, it felt intoxicating. I took pride in the fact that I could attend incidents of extreme danger or horror and feel nothing.
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I remember going to an incident where the caretaker of a building had found a man dead from a drug overdose. I arrived with two other officers — one of them was a rookie. A police photographer arrived soon after. The death was non-suspicious, so the scene did not need a full examination.
The smell was horrendous. The deceased man had been there for some time and was decomposing. We had to spend time in the room, looking for evidence, ruling out foul play, and inspecting the body. We also had to search him for valuables.
The other officer and I noticed the new guy was turning green. We found it hilarious when he puked from the upstairs window, as he couldn’t reach the toilet in time.
Later, the photographer showed visible distress and said he’d never seen anything as bad. We found that funny, too.
In all our laughing and sick games, I’d completely lost sight of the man dead in front of us—a man with a name, a family, and friends. I’d lost sight of the tragic circumstances that now caused me such amusement.
Most of all, I’d lost sight of my humanity.
Could I ever find myself again?
Where had the boy gone who cried at roadkill? Who was this monster that felt numb to the pain of others? Surely there was a middle ground?
Other people had noticed that I’d changed. I’d become hard and aggressive. People who knew me when I was younger barely recognized me. I now had to win every argument and prove every point, and no slight, however small, went unpunished.
In a way, it was a blessing that shortly after the drug overdose case, I was medically retired due to?PTSD . You see, I did feel pain. I felt such pain that I buried it for years. PTSD was the result of that pain bursting out and demanding recognition.
PTSD forced me out of the police. At the time, I saw leaving as the worst thing in the world.?But?I could never rediscover my true self in that world. It’s too harsh and brutal.?At the same time, nothing would have made me quit unless I was forced to.?So, as much as I hate PTSD, it positively changed my life alongside all the vile effects you’d expect.
It took years to lose that hardness. I grieved losing my job like I’d grieve a dead relative. I had to find a new identity, which I did through writing. People around me noticed my armor was cracking. My authentic self was starting to come out.
I found my compassion again, but unlike my younger self, it came from a position of strength.?I now had the best of both worlds. I knew I was strong enough to handle anything life threw at me, but I cared about others again.?Trusting people is a work in progress, but I’m better than ever.
The new me.
I didn’t know I was broken until I was fixed. As the hard cloak of armor I built around myself crumbles, my tears flow.
I didn’t cry for years, but now I’m moved by many beautiful things:
Crying is reconnecting me to the world I felt so distant from. It also connects me to my old self, a self I thought was dead but merely dormant.
Maybe crying over roadkill isn’t so bad after all.