I ended up unexpectedly crying in front of my friend a couple days ago so here’s that

I haven’t seen him in a long time because we’ve both been busy and he’s not very social, so I don’t get to see him all that much.

I’ve had a rough few months because of various things and I felt really weird about him not knowing any of that, so I was being kind of tense. I wasn’t sure if I should bring any of it up, since it’s irrelevant to him but it’d be so weird to hang out with him and for him to just have no idea what’s going on with me. We have a weird relationship cause we’re childhood friends and we’re involved in high school drama together so we’ve not been super open with each-other since then.

We hung out for a couple hours and did everything we were planning on doing. When I ended up having to reference the small part he did know about, he remembered he knew nothing of what I’ve been doing recently and asked me about it. I was cagey at first but I got over myself cause ultimately, this is what I wanted. As we were doing something else casually, I went over the events of the last few months.

When I got to the thing I’m most bothered by I felt heat in my face and eyes out of nowhere like the tears just snuck up on me. We weren’t looking at each-other so I paused intending to just skip that. But noticing the pause, he asked me about it directly. It crept into my voice immediately and it went higher in pitch as I quickly explained what the issue was. He seemed concerned noticing I was clearly about to cry and said we don’t have to talk about it if I don’t want to, but at that point I’d already committed to telling him everything so I said I’d try. I began saying what the issue was and instantly had tears going down my cheeks. I looked down embarrassed and had them running across the bridge of my nose with the tilt of my head. I was surprised it came on that quickly, it usually doesn’t for me.

I grabbed toilet paper as tissues cause that’s what was already within arms reach of me and wiped my tears with that. I kept doing that through the conversation because I didn’t really want him to look at me, I was very self conscious of what faces I was making. I didn’t look back at him at all, just kept my eyes toward the floor, the tissue or the table in front of us.
When I got a bit deeper into it he tried to give me advice but he seemed hesitant about it like he was unsure how to handle this situation. He’s not used to people crying in front of him I think.
He offered to hug me a couple times, I wish we could’ve stayed like that but he was quick about it. I did appreciate the affection regardless tho.

I had tears rolling down my face the entire time and I kept wiping them before they got to the lower half of my face. As he was talking I felt my top lip quiver and I fought my voice shaking hard cause I find that so much more embarrassing than the appearance of tears.

Eventually he suggested we put a pin in that topic cause we had to eat dinner with the rest of his household and I wouldn’t want to look like I’ve cried when we see them so I should try and relax. I was disappointed in a way, cause now that I’d been able to cry I was hoping to get it out of my system but I didn’t get to really cry very hard, just for an extended period of time. But I agreed, he was right. I went splash some cold water on my face and kept wet tissues to swab my eyes with so they won’t be red.

We did let it go at that point and talked about other things, then we ate dinner with everyone and I went home.
I thought about that interaction the whole way home and the rest of that night. I don’t know why I was so thrown by it, but I really was.