I Only Cry at Legends.

America happened.

The country and culture have a way of showing you who you really are and what you're capable of. It shows you all possibilities. It contains suffering and relief in equal measure. The safety nets are removed and you are thrown into a jungle knowing you can't run back home. You have to endure and build resilience because no one is coming to save you. You have to save yourself.

Before America my tears used to flow like a river. I didn't even need a reason. I would think of something sad and the tears would flow. I had this habit where I would cry while looking at myself in the mirror and feel sad for myself. It made my suffering feel more intimate and allowed me to reassure myself that what I was feeling was real, it mattered and I was allowed to fall apart.

I don't do that anymore. Now I pass my reflection in the bathroom when I wash my hands. The face is familiar but I barely recognize it. I think I prayed myself into that.

I used to recite the serenity prayer religiously and it worked. I accepted things so completely that I accepted myself right out of feeling them.

My anger feels flat now. Measured. The intensity has dimmed. I am composed. More assertive. I do things when I want. Fear doesn't hold me back. My negative emotions don't feel catastrophic. My positive emotions don't feel like something to get drunk on. I know who I am. I just don't recognize myself anymore.

The only time the seal breaks is when I am listening to music or dissolving into a series like the Wheel of Time. I bonded with characters like Egwene, Rand and Mat because they were thrown into something too large for them but they kept walking anyway. They speak to me intimately when I watch them sitting in three places at once: dissolved in the story, watching the screen, and noticing the craft. My dissolved self cries at every milestone and hard-won moment. Only inside someone else's world do the tears roll.

Egwene was me.

Deep down I have always felt that I was going to do impressive things but I didn't know how. I found myself in the presence of great mentors, leaders and institutions and I tried very hard to learn something despite not yet understanding what I was truly capable of. I hung on by a thread sometimes. It took silence, suffering and not so much going on career wise to know who I was. I needed America.

What breaks me open about Egwene is not her suffering but her eagerness. At one point she tells an Aes Sedai she didn't come to the White Tower for easy. She knows she is meant for something. She is fully on the journey even without seeing the destination and I recognize that from the inside. I cry at her because I can see her whole, the preparation and arrival.

I am still waiting for my party. The preparation is done but I don't know what the party is. I just know that when it comes I will show up and do it justice.

Maybe that is why the tears won't come yet because this is the part where I hold it together. The crying will come after when I am finally on the other side and will look back and see the shape of what I survived and what it made of me.

The river isn't gone. It's just not time yet.