the exact reason as to why it is considered taboo is still unknown to me, but every time i did cry about something as an emotional teenager in the living room, my mother would shush me and/or shoo me away with a "choi!". maybe it was something to do with upsetting the balance of an otherwise happy household. feng shui? i don't know.
ironically, for a woman that detests crying, my mother now regularly watches Hokkien soaps that involve lots of it. particularly the loud, waily, over-the-top kind, the "when the main character finds out that her lover will not run away with her and is going back to his wife" kind. you get the picture. granted, she turns the volume down when these parts come on, but still.
as a result, i now absolutely detest when i cry in public. when i do, i feel a huge cloud of shame envelop me, as if the bigger issue isn't why i was crying. a few weeks ago, i was bawling on a bench in the middle of a mall in KL after a particularly horrible fight with someone dear to me that i thought i'd lost for good. i was on the phone to my good friend Terence, who is amazing at cheering me up. several elderly ladies sitting nearby were boring holes into my head with their stares. i was hunched over, my free arm wrapped around the back of my legs, my head on my knees; to be fair, i was probably attracting more attention than avoiding it.
just two days ago i found myself crying in my room after rereading old sappy texts, and knowing that my mother was sleeping in the her room next to mine, i stifled my sobs, afraid that she would overhear. and then, something came over me as if someone flicked a lightswitch in my brain. who cared if she heard? i was an adult. a rational, emotional, adult human being, who could therefore express herself in any way she saw fit. so i sobbed out loud. and boy did it feel good. i felt absolutely free, and felt heaps better when i was done.
mother never said a thing.
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