The hyphen between souls
''Oh no. Not again. My chin is starting to tremble... my vocal chords want to betray me, and I feel the one-way faucet of my eyes being turned on...'' Have you ever experienced this automatic response called tears at the most inopportune moment ? By the time I was a teenager, it had happened countless times. I seemed to cry for no reason. But it is because I was crying for every reason: sadness, of course, but also anger (for having bottled up frustration against situations, people, and especially myself for not have asserted boundaries), panic, overwhelm, and yes, joy and elation. I would cry upon hearing that someone I didn't even know had died, or during commercials, or while watching the Olympics, or at weddings, or if I had a disappointing grade, or if I felt left out. It didn't matter, it seemed like the energy of the people around, their own emotional intensity, expressed or not, was sufficient for me to feel it and embody it. To say it differently, af...