You're Never Being a Burden to Your Friend, if They’re Actually Your Friend

There’s a time to cry and there's a time to laugh, and our friendships should allow space for both, even when we feel like our life’s a Tyler Perry movie with never-ending ridiculous drama.

(l-r) Queen Latifah, Kim Coles, and Erika Alexander in LIVING SINGLE (Warner Bros. Studios, 1993-1998)

“Whenever this life get tough (You gotta fight with)

My homegirls standing to my left (and my right)

True blue, (it's tight like glue)”

- Living Single Theme Song, Queen Latifah

I am a cry baby. There is truly nothing better than a good cry. Well, of course there are better things than sad crying, like utter joy, perhaps. But, crying is wonderfully cathartic. I have cried while eating a plate of my deliciously over-hard and fluffy scrambled eggs. I’ve cried in the car, after hearing an Andraé Crouch song that reminded me of my late father. I have cried on the plane while I was headed to a much needed child-free vacation because at the time, I missed my six-month old, already. The best place for a sob fest though, is in the shower. I have NOTEBOOK-cried in the shower so many times, I felt like I was IN the movie, standing out in the rain, asking Noah: why didn’t you write me.

While I've had little inhibitions about crying in front of my immediate family, I’ve always been shy sobbing in front of my friends. Even the besties. Not for fear of their judgment, but because I’ve always been the listening ear, the person to vent to, the shoulder to cry on. And it wasn’t because I didn’t have anything to cry about, but when I look back on my twenties and early thirties and compare them to what I have experienced in my late thirties and early forties, I didn’t really have anything to cry about. Self-judgment, much?