Tearless

I have never shed a tear in my life. Apparently, I have retarded tear ducts. My bio professor in Sydney told me I have "dysfunctional lacrimal glands" . I still don't quite understand it all but basically my tear ducts are screwy and I can't produce tears.

This has caused some upheaval in my life at times. When I was a little girl and was pained by something, particularly at school, my teachers and babysitters often thought I was "faking" being hurt. I was then usually punished in some minor way. My mother had to actually write letters to people informing them that her daughter doesn't have tears and if she looks in pain or is sad then she is genuinely hurting. It was my massive misfortune to be a super-sensitive child and therefore subject to several sequences of sadness. I believe the term "crybaby" was thrown at me more than once. I knew that people thought I was odd in some way and that if only I could have water pour my eyes like others than maybe I'd be normal (Whatever that is. It was only until later that I realised no one knew or cared about my lack of tears and I am just odd in general).

I took to pouring hot water from my eyes to see if it would feel like what I imagined tears to feel like. Looking back it seems weird that I did that but I was just trying to fit in. Even to this day if I am in the shower and a droplet of water trickles down past my eye there's a brief moment of wondering, "Is that what a tear is like?"

For some reason around the age of 13 I got quite upset about this little tearless thing. I kept asking my father why and Wikipedia hadn't been invented yet and I didn't know the name of these lacrimal thingys. No one else seemed to, either. I overheard my father say to a family friend, "She's sad right now because she can't cry." Let me clarify something here. I can cry. Oh, yes. Just no tears. So what happens is that my nose gets a little red, there's some sniffing, and my eyes get glazy. You would notice if there was something bothering me. My dad didn't understand. I don't know if I even do.

Coveting tears seems to be something I've always done like wanting braces, glasses, and being flat-chested. But like with those, I've finally grown out of wanting them.