The day that my 18 year old cat had to be put down. That morning, I pulled up a video of birds for her to watch, same as most other mornings. And seeing her watching the birds as if nothing was wrong, knowing that it was the last day I would spend with her, that fucking broke me.

Prior to that, I think I hadn't cried in over 20 years.

August last year, when my cat went into advanced stage kidney failure and I chose to have her put to sleep. She had stopped eating and didn't have the strength to support her own head at that point so not a difficult decision, but still very hard to accept.

Yesterday when I touched the cast paw print of my bestest boy. A post from someone else made me remember him. I was crying from losing him and also looking up old videos of him being cute and silly.

Almost every single day. My life took the fun house mirror approach to living and I'm not handling it well, or recovering.

On an episode of a hospital-based show, a little girl (like, 8 or 10) drowns in a pool and effort to resuscitate fail. That didn't get me, even with the parents crying. The girl has a sister, who is making a card for the girl who has already been declared dead. Sad, but didn't get me. Sister explains that the girl died saving her, since she fell in the neighbor's pool trying to get a ball, and the sister jumped in, pushed the sister out, and then couldn't get out herself, and eventually drowned.

And I got slammed with a real-life memory. I work in Search and Rescue, and one case my station had over a decade ago was a pair of children that got swept out to sea. Only the younger brother survived. Because the sister spent the whole time keeping him above water, and ended up exhausting and drowning herself. I try not to think about it, because it fucks me up really bad, and especially because now I have a daughter and a younger son. That scene dredged that up real hard, real fast.

I cry almost daily.

Started getting this way when my wife passed. Now tons of things trigger it.

What happened to you happened to me with a great uncle when I was in my teens. He was a good person and tried to protect me from some of the BS that was happening. He had esophageal cancer. It took al long time before I broke down and when it happened I was on a small summertime school group trip. I was outside of a restaurant alone and no one knew. It was odd for me because I always took loss very hard and have since that point but I was mainly just numb.

I stopped crying at 8 (because I was told to man up) and I've cried probably a handful of times since then. I've been working pretty hard on it and the first time I sobbed as an adult was so freeing. I haven't gotten it back since, and I still get stuck in the stone face mode most of the time. I got pretty close watching "no other land" which was a devastating watch.

As a guy there is also a lot of shame and fear around crying. Especially around women. I'm scared of having my partner get the ick and not feel like I'm manly enough to be attractive and dominant anymore. I'd have an easier time crying around men because even if they don't think I'm very manly, that's not a big part of my social personality. At work of course it would be completely devastating...

I'm trying to make sure my kids all feel comfortable crying regardless of gender. Of course there is only so much you can do against social norms.

I got made fun of for crying when my grandfather died. Over 30 years ago. So I stopped.

It depends on your definition. If you mean tearing up, it was this past weekend. If you mean open sobbing, I think it was a few months ago. I want to cry all the time, but it's actually very difficult to do, even when I'm upset. I wish I could turn it on when I feel like, but it just doesn't work that way.

The last time I completely lost it was when my dog died eight years ago. Before that would have been during my divorce, several times, back in 2010. And, just two years before that, when my mom died.

I'm notoriously tender-hearted. I tear up watching or listening to emotional content all the time. I've never cried at funeral, though...mostly because I'm usually just trying to keep it together so I can be supportive for those who need it. Otherwise, I'm a big softie and it annoys me sometimes, but...it's just how I am, I guess.

Rotavirus.
Puking and shitting your guts out every 15 minutes for hours and hours can kinda give you a different perspective on your existence.

A couple weeks ago I was cooking and listening to Kendrick Lamar when Mother I Sober started playing. The build up always gets me to some degree, but that time I had to stop what I was doing and let it all go... I'm lucky my roommate wasn't there lol, he'd probably think I'd cut my self or something.

Well, I know what that feels like. Like you've run out of tears. I don't know why that happens but I was in that state for a long time and it finally loosened up when I was talking to my therapist. My parents are the kind of people to talk shit about family (like, just a bit better than 4chan) after having dinner with them or whatever. One time my sister just couldn't take it anymore and started crying in the back seat because they were being so horrible... well, I realized how much that pissed me off years later when I was talking about it with my therapist. It really surprised me; before it was a just a dim memory of concern for my sister and annoyance at my parents but talking about it made me cry with rage over how shitty my parents are. I'm tearing up when I'm typing this... fuck you mom and dad. Fucking assholes. /rant

When my mom died was the last time full on sobbed

It’s a real problem.

I have BPD. The wrong song comes on the radio, I'll cry. I end up crying at least once a day.

Yesterday. I was telling my boss about how my husband abruptly and with finality brought up divorce in the midst of asking for a raise. Didn't expect to cry but it happened. She was super supportive 🙂

I would say when my brother tragically passed away. It was very unexpected. It was a fentanyl overdose. I hadn’t known he was abusing drugs at the time. Now however, hindsight is much clearer. He had suffered abuse that was something we both experienced as children. He being older, his stoicism concealed the trauma. He left three beautiful children. And so, it was a very long weekend. I had been traveling at the time with my spouse and I didn’t really know how to process it while being away on a trip friends had committed time and resources to attend. It was this very festive time and I was bereft with grief and this anger as if I was on fire. I wept all day once I could get back to the hotel. I don’t think I ever had been so woebegone in my whole life. Friends had tried to console me but there were so many things we had never said to each other. It’s something I still journal about and consider, although the anguish has become less burdensome.

I cry all the time for basically no reason. It was most likely last week.

I went to see Madama Butterfly this last weekend. I don't think there was a dry eye in the house at the end.

It was kind of funny how people booed the actor who played Pinkerton at the end, and he clearly took it as a compliment.

A few weeks ago when I watched interstellar again

I watched the new Malcolm in the Middle.

UPDATE: I finished reading all the comments.

Just a few hours ago :/

The other day my neighbour's 4yo daughter saw me come home from the yard where she plays with her cousins. She ran up to me arms open wide saying "huuuug !!" and her cousin (same age) followed her lead so a second later I had my arms full with these 2 beautiful, innocent, aww-factor little girls. As someone struggling to have children for years I felt simply... fulfilled (?) for a short second there. Then I went inside and broke down

Watching Daniel Tiger. The show is so sweet sometimes.

I had an experience a few years back and stopped crying for 2 years. I cry now but if it's for personal reasons I often suppress my emotions as it starts and it goes away before I can process anything. Therapy has helped me recently cry longer and stay in a moment, but I understand that's expensive and even I can't afford it. I hope you are able to process things.

The final episode of the new season of Malcolm in the Middle. I really enjoyed the new season! So, on Saturday.

I used to have a lot of emotions, too. They kind of just turned off while I was in college. I can't pinpoint when specifically, I just noticed they were gone eventually. Now, it's years between periods when I cry. I cried in 2013 when I lost a friend. I cried in 2020 when I lost my grandma. I cried in 2024 when I lost my step grandma. These are all just sudden, too. I felt fine, then without warning in the middle of a sentence, it would just kind of burst out for a minute or so. I cried last year when I lost my grandpa (he was my last remaining grandparent). But that was actually quite brief, and I feel pretty good about that now. He called it quits on his own terms, and we all got to say goodbye. He went in his sleep, with his kids there. I really don't think anyone could ask for a better way to go.

The most recent time was this February. My 3 year old needed dental crowns. And they were putting her under for it. And the thought of my perfect, precious baby having to go through that just broke me. More than anything I can remember in recent history. Worse than any death. I got off the phone with the anesthesiologist office, all was good, and when I went to relay the info to my wife I just had an explosion of feelings. My poor baby. Was she going to be scared? We couldn't be in the room with her when they put her under. Was she going to be in pain when she woke up? I wish I could keep her from feeling anything bad forever. Will she be OK? She is so small for anesthesia. I just wanted to hold her and hold her and protect her from everything.

Honestly, it was kind of nice to confirm that I do, in fact, have empathy. I mean, there are things that don't directly affect me that I have moral feelings about. I donate to things that aren't applicable to me. But to actually have emotional feelings about things? No, typically not. When I see a homeless person, it doesn't really make me sad or anything. Someone I knew in high school gets cancer and dies leaving 3 young kids behind? I will briefly think about that being a shame, but it will be out of my mind shortly. I love my wife and daughter as much as I can possibly love another human being. But I still think they love more. I just know my maximum capability of love is probably much lower than them. Like, I feel as if I am missing out on a fundamental part of being human. Almost as if I am Data from Next Gen, and my emotion chip just turns on randomly for a few minutes every couple of years. It is through a lot of conscious effort that I think I'm able to mask it. Like, display this action of affection in this instance. Display happiness here.

I don't think it's autism, I used to feel "normal". Clinical depression, perhaps? Idk, I'm not going to self-diagnose anything. I am very good at picking up on emotions and reading people. And I'm not a fucking Patrick Bateman.

Uh that would be watching Season 2 Episode 9 of Bluey while snuggled up with my family prior to the kids' bedtime.

Whenever I'm hungover, which these days is a few times a month. I don't just weep all day or anything, but a sad song or even just a depressing or emotional commercial can set me off. It's ridiculous.

Full on sobbing? About a month ago, maybe a little less. choking up and tearing up and being unable to speak, just now as I type this.

At the end of February, I had to unexpectedly say goodbye to my girl Ripley (Mastiff/Lab cross). I think a lot of people have a soul dog, and for me, Ripley was that. She very literally saved my life by simply being there during my darkest depressions, and whenever I would have a panic attack, I would bury my face in her fur and breath in, and her scent would somehow pull me out of it. I live now absolutely terrified of what's going to happen the next time I have an anxiety attack and she's not around.

About three weeks before, she started limping. Vet said basically that it's either a sprained muscle or bone cancer. I said, well, let's start optimistic, get her some painkillers and muscle relaxants to give her leg time to heal if it's a sprain and then go from there. And for about three weeks, it worked. Went off the meds 10 days later and was seemingly back to normal. So I figure I dodged a bullet.

At the end of February, it starts up again; worse this time. So I make another vet appointment for x-rays, but it wouldn't be until the end of the week, and because she's in pain, the vet asks if I can drop her off and she can hang around there so that they can squeeze her in, in between actual appointments that same day. I said yes, not even thinking for a moment that this would be the last time I would see her awake and alert.

I knew that it was possibly bone cancer. I was expecting that. That isn't what haunts me and makes me cry when I think about it. It's two things primarily.

1. The absolute sudden nature of it. I get a phone call saying that they're asking my permission to sedate her for the x-ray because it's too uncomfortable and painful for her to sit in the machine in the proper position to xray her leg otherwise. And then a second phone call an hour later, not only confirming that it was bone cancer, but that it had already started into her lungs. I had to make a choice. I could either take her home for a day or two to say goodbye in private, but in order to not be in pain she would essentially be so drugged up that she wouldn't really have an quality of life anyway. Or I could race to the vet and say my goodbye's right then and there. That unexpectedness hit me like a tonne of bricks, but what really hurt was...

2. I called a friend to drive me to the vet and be there with me while I said goodbye. When we arrived, Ripley was still only just starting to come out of the first sedation that she had been given in order to take the x-ray. I spent almost an hour, just laying on the floor next to her, talking to her and stroking her fur. But I don't know...and I'll never truly know for sure; if she knew that I was there for her in her final moments. Did she wake up enough from the first sedative enough to register my presence with her before they gave her the next one in order to start the euthenasia process?

Or did my Ripley go to her rest thinking that she was alone, and her last memory of me was dropping her off at the vet?

My friend insists that she felt Ripley's breathing speed up when she heard my voice, but she could just be trying to make me feel better. And it's that unknown that still makes me cry whenever I think of it, even two months later.

The last ugly sobbing cry was a month after she passed, the crematorium sent me her ashes back, and, unbeknownst to me, they took a nose print of her nose for me. Seeing that nose print broke me all over again. It'll soon be a tattoo.

Anyway, I'm going to stop now. I've run on long enough and I'm on the verge of crying again. Pretty manly for a 50-year old dude, I know... But she was my everything and I miss her terribly every day.

Last night at the end of DTF St. Louis.

I cry probably daily on average if we count all types of crying. I’ve sobbed a handful of times in my life. I cry hard a few times a year. I mostly cry because I’m inspired by something like the Artemis II mission had me crying either because of the spirit of space travel or being touched by how much I love all 4 of the beautiful people on it. I cry when I’m happy.

As another said, can't remember the last time I cried for myself. I know and understand a lot of the reasons for a bunch of things, but also come to accept that I can't do anything about many of them. Usually just swear and move on with it.

In the case that someone offends me or attacks me or my beliefs, I only get angry and tell them to fuck off for eternity. I don't do forgive and forget, I remember and resent.

Heartfelt stuff in shows and movies can make me tear up, but I haven't ugly cried in like 5ish years when life shat all over me and spit in my mouth. Doing better now but I imagine it would take something big to make me cry again.

😮‍💨

Edit: another comment reminded me, last time was when my grandpa was about to pass and I broke down at work of all places 😭

Season 1 Episode 3 of The Last of Us TV show. I was in a similar place as you for a long time, and that episode of all things just absolutely broke me for some reason. It was pretty cathartic.

Yesterday, just thinking about some One Piece character.

Everytime i listen to One Life by Last Emperor

Happy tears? Yesterday, but not just washing my face. Really, really sad, emotional storm? A couple of years ago. Angry tears? Can't remember. I've been working on myself and balancing out.

Physical pain? Can't remember, but my eyes have watered a few times.

About anything directly affecting me, it's been a while.

But I watch stuff to happy cry occasionally and I get almost the same emotional release. Shallower but more frequent.

Learned my cat has cancer today :'(

Well I had a good streak going until I read these stories. Thanks.

Few months back when the memories of a deceased relative flooded back and the fear of losing more loved ones caught me off guard

I am not much of a crier. Whats wierd is that some movies can bring me close to tears but its the rare in life event that can.

Crying enough to interrupt my breathing with the quivers and and all? When I was 13 at my grandparent's funeral. That was the first death for me. Emotional tears? Like every other day. Happy, sad story, movie, moving article, beautiful community moment, a good song at the right time, whatever. It's been like this for over 30 years.

You don't have to cry. Hopefully, it's just a sign your brain has readjusted how it ranks stressful situations and not anything more serious than that.