So I am in shock at the number of observations I've had this month. Wow. I'll describe all of them.

1.) A few days ago, my BF and I were talking about something emotional, and his voice was a bit unsteady. Finally, a few tears fell down his face. He sort of leaned to one side and covered his eyes with his hand for a second, and took one shaky/sobbing breath. He then kept talking through the tears and wiped them off of his face. It probably lasted about one minute.

2.) An old close male friend called me last week - he'd received some bad news, and he needed to talk to someone. We were really good friends for years, but I never saw him cry. But the other night, we talked for about an hour, and he was crying the entire time. He was talking pretty much the whole time, and his voice was constantly shaking and cracking. He was sniffling a lot, and in between sentences, he took shaky breaths. He was crying pretty much nonstop, and when he would say something particularly emotional, his voice would rise in pitch and he occasionally had to stop and sob briefly. I said comforting things and let him vent, and he told me that he was so grateful that he could still call me and talk even though we live far apart.

3.) One of my female colleagues/friends is going through a hard time. I was at work the other day and stopped by her office to say hi. She told me to come inside for a minute, and she started giving me updates about a situation in her life that we'd previously talked about a few times. After about five minutes, she broke down in tears. She was still talking, and she was definitely doing the lip bulge. Tears were constantly falling down her face, and she was taking sharp breaths between sentences and words. She would occasionally partially cover her face with her hand to wipe away tears and regain enough composure to keep talking. She wasn't self-conscious about the crying, but she kept apologizing for taking up my time. I reassured her that it was not any trouble and that I wanted to help her. After about ten minutes of me comforting her verbally, we hugged, and we both had to get back to work.

4.) I was hanging out with my really close male friend the other night (who I am attracted to...). We were listening to one of our favorite pieces of music, and we were both kind of looking straight ahead/at the computer, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw him wipe his eyes with his hand. He did this twice, and I tried not to react because I wanted it to seem like a normal occurrence. When the music was over, we made eye contact again and started talking, and his eyes were definitely pink and a little wet. I saw him become overwhelmed reacting to music a few weeks ago, too - he suddenly just teared up and kind of laughed with delight at the music. It was...fantastic.

5.) I played a concert the other day, and after a particularly heart-wrenching selection, I heard a number of people in the audience sniffling. I have to say - the power of performing amazes me sometimes. If one does it right, one has everyone's emotions under control. What could be more thrilling?

Anyway - this may be only five observations, but they have all occurred in the month of November. Which is seriously a LOT for me.