I Hope You Cry More Than I Do

Right now I’m 29. For a long time, whenever worries about aging crossed my mind I’d calm myself by thinking about what I’d call my independent years—the years after leaving home at 18 in which I’ve had full control. “I’m 25, and that’s a quarter of my life gone if I’m lucky,” I’d think, “but really I’ve only had seven years of real independence. Seven years of what can fairly be called ‘life,’ and I’ve got a lot more runs of seven years in me than I do of 25.” But by the time I assume you’ll read this you’ll be staring down 40, much like I’m staring down 30 now, and by then you’ll have spent more time independent than you ever did at home. I wonder how that crisis went. I hope it wasn’t one for you. But if I look back on these 11 years of independence, a lot has happened: moving out, going to uni, meeting L—, getting a work placement, moving to the city centre, completing my masters, starting fencing, getting a PhD, moving in with L—, trips to Italy, to Spain, to the Czech Republic, so many things in a time span I’ll hopefully get to do again at least four or five more times. 

The catch is that my life has changed. I got a job. My weeks are now predictable, and even though my job is good, I find my time for interests squeezed into the evenings and weekends and I can already feel time speeding up. I’m a bit scared to know how fast it goes for you. L— and I have already lived in the new apartment for a year—that’s quite scary. But ten years is also enough time to reflect on; I’ve changed a lot since I was 19, and in ways I can honestly say I’m proud of. I’ve become more confident, and a lot more socially capable. At 19 I had L— and coursemates, but not much else. Now I have a great web of friends (which I’m actually quite guilty of neglecting) which has sprung into my life through fencing. Of course it’s shrunk over time as friends move away or go quiet, and it’s even grown as old friends come back into my life only for them to go just as quickly as they came. It’s normal, I know that, but I’m in a much better place now than I was. 

What makes me smile the most though, is what I was listening to at 19, what I was watching, and what I was threatening to start reading. My Spotify playlists were rammed with releases from Spinnin’ Records, everything Tchami and his label were putting out, house music, bass house, and whatever Skrillex and Diplo were doing around the time. I have a small hardback book in a drawer somewhere with a list of all of the horror films I’d watched, along with their rankings. I hadn’t discovered Letterboxd yet. My bookshelf was empty, or maybe I’d made my first foray with Bob Woodward’s Fear, or Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho. All of this is still undoubtedly part of me, and I love it, but now I find myself hunting out the little moments—the human moments where perhaps not much is happening, but you can feel everything happening. Art whose scope is a lot smaller, which decides to tell me the story of a person or two and gives me the slightest of glimpses into what goes on behind their eyes, away from the big flashy spectacles and dramatic moments. Maybe it’s Paul Mescal’s struggling divorced dad holidaying with his daughter in Aftersun, sitting on his bed with his naked back to the camera, crying. Or maybe it’s Bridget Everett’s Louise in Wake Up Deadman who just wants to talk to Father Jud about her fights with her dying mother. I don’t know what it is exactly that’s changed inside me to push me in this way. It could be that I’ve matured as I’ve grown up, or that I’ve now read a lot more and have had greater exposure to the lives of other people. Or perhaps I’m now old enough to be able to reflect on our own parents’ divorce in the context of a lived ten year relationship; to look past the surface story and see the hurt in our Mum’s eyes over the table at a meal when someone ignorantly raises the subject, even after so many years. 

And it’s noticeable just how often such moments now make me cry. I’ll break out into tears driving to work whilst listening to The 1975’s Matty Healy sing “I’m looking through you/ while you’re looking through your phone/ and then leaving with somebody else,” or earthsignchels rap:

I don’t know how to act

No life inside his body, gave me heart attack

I pray I am not punished for the fun I have.

But these tears are not bad tears. I find myself searching for them. They feel fulfilling, like I can understand someone just a little better, like I can glimpse a fraction of a life and a mind and live inside them for a second. I now have this strange urge to hug a musician or a dancer when their performance hits me in such a way that I can see them through it. Those kinds of performances where you can almost see the years of dedication, where some indescribable part of their soul sneaks through and makes its way to me. So now, when a friend tells me their hardships at home, or when I meet a first year student (who is essentially us when we were 19) who’s asking for some advice on where he can go with the path he’s chosen, I feel like I see more of them than I used to. A bit like a sixth sense that shows me what their life is like to live. And I find myself wanting to listen. I’m now in the habit of talking less, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned from these tears it’s that people are interesting.

I wonder what it would’ve been like to read this when I was 19? Would I have understood it at all? A friend once laughed when I told him I’d become a crier at films. I didn’t mind. He was 23. Just the same, I wonder what it would be like to read what you have to say at 39. Would I understand it? I am yet to feel real grief, and I hope you are still none the wiser, but from the tastes I’ve had of it through the lives of others I can already feel its weight. I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t scare me. I know I can do nothing to prepare for it, nor to cushion its impact when it does come, and so all I can know is that I’m happy with where I am. And if growing up like this has made me cry more, then I hope you cry more than I do.