Hi! I haven’t been here in forever (had kids, life got busy), but I miss the forum! Thought I’d post a self obs from the other day. This one was interesting because of how hard I was crying and how silent I was trying to be.

I was out on the front porch with some people, and something happened that really upset me. I could feel my throat constricting and my eyes filling with tears and knew I had to leave immediately if I didn’t want to cry publicly. There were also people inside the house, which was awkward. I finished a sentence and could feel my voice breaking near the end, and I’m not sure whether the other person picked up on it, but I managed to make an escape and walk inside.

Our stairwell is right inside the door and leads directly up to our bedroom. As soon as I got to the foot of the stairs, my emotions started to fight to get out. My face contorted and my lips were pressed very hard together in a closed lip curl. My eyes were increasingly blurred with tears, and I could feel my abs tighten with every step as I struggled to keep the sobs in. I walked, slightly bent over, up the stairs, holding my hand over my trembling lips as I opened the bedroom door and half-fell into the room.

I pushed the door shut, and the relief was intense. My eyes squeezed shut and about 4 streams of tears cascaded down my face immediately. My lips parted into a full lip curl, and I let all of my held breath out in a stream of silent, rapid sobs that shook my shoulders and belly. I was leaning on the bedpost, and after the first long sob and shaky, silent inhale, I sank down onto the bed. Because I was trying to be so silent, I was basically just sitting there, bent over, unable to inhale or exhale, my face fully contorted, tears rapidly forming and falling. It was pretty uncomfortable, actually, because I knew that if I’d had the freedom, I would have been loudly and gutturally sobbing, and my throat and abs were so tense trying to keep it silent. This was counterproductive once or twice, and there were one or two loud gasps, but I sat there in silent, tense sobs for probably 5 minutes. My face actually started to hurt because of how tightly I was holding back.

After a few minutes, I had calmed a bit, and I laid down on the pillow and soaked it with tears and quiet, rapid sobs for a few minutes. I was spent after that, and I just laid there, tears intermittently dripping onto the pillow. My eyes and nose were really red and swollen after this, and I stayed upstairs for a bit (which wasn’t that weird in context, so no one was really aware of what was going on).

Anyway, this was somewhat unpleasant at the time, but interesting in retrospect. I have lots of obs (both me and my husband, and one where I cried in front of my SIL) that I hope to find time to post soon!

Last edited by carrotcake (July 30, 2024 1:30 am)