Emotions

I'm not sure whether this is normal or not. I have cried on average three or four times a day, every day, for the last eleven days. I have cried more often and more passionately than at any other time of my life, including all my heart wrenching break ups! 

But don't worry, these are not sad tears, these are happy tears. Tears of pride. Tears for the amazing athletes of the Olympics. It's not just Team GB that I'm crying over, its all of the athletes from around the world - although I must admit, when a Brit is winning something and the whole nation holds their breath as one, then begin cheering as the astounding wall of noise builds up from the audience, and you get goose bumps on your arms because the energy is so electrifying... then it's all I can do but sob openly and unashamedly with flaring nostrils and trembling lip and scream encouragement at the top of my lungs. Phew! I'm absolutely exhausted from it all... and hoarse... and we've got five more days to go AND the Paralympics still to come! Don't get me started on those... That will probably be a years' full of sobbing for just one race.

Is it just me? Is anyone else watching the Olympics obsessively? Watching sports they don't even like, have never watched before with teams that are from countries they have never heard of (Burkina Faso for instance)? Well, I am. Greco wrestling at 8am? Handball at 10? I'm also listening to it at work through the Internet which is quite strange... Listening to the sailing for instance, is not the most exciting way to spend an afternoon. I listened to the shooting too, which again, was a bit odd. More like listening to a spaghetti western, all guns blazing... but we did win gold in the shooting, therefore I cried. I couldn't even see the winner but as soon as I heard him speak and noticed the crack of emotion in his voice, I was a goner! 

To be honest though, this outburst of emotion is not that unusual. I have always cried at everything, happy or sad. I cry at the news or reading the paper, for lost children and found pets. I cry at people's achievements and hardships, at the joys and pains of life. I cry when I hear friends are pregnant and when I see newborn babies. I cry at the beauty of ballet and the intenseness of the opera. I often stand in ovation at the theatre with eyes welling, clapping my hands until they smart. I watch sad films in the privacy of my flat and find my tops soaked with tears, wailing "why, why" at the terrible endings. I've read paragraphs in books that have reduced me to a babbling mess, then read them again to see why it made me cry, only to repeat the process all over again! 

You may think all those things are perfectly natural to cry about but I also think I have a slightly overactive empathy gene if that's possible. I saw a girl on the tube the other day who had obviously has some terrible news and was trying desperately to keep her composure as tears rolled down her face. I watched her and just felt myself go. Tears started pouring down my face too and I just wanted to reach out and grab her hand, but then she got off the tube and I was left puffy faced and red eyed with several passengers looking at me with undisguised astonishment. On another occasion, I was flat sharing and had returned home quite late and I admit, a little tipsy. I thought I'd watch a film and saw a DVD labelled "wedding", so I watched it. The groom, I discovered later, was a relative of my flat mate but at the time of watching, I didn't recognise anyone. An hour later my flat mate came back and found me sobbing uncontrollably. Apparently I just kept saying "it was such a beautiful wedding" over and over.  Oh dear. 

My emotions frequently get the better of me but I think during the Olympics they are on overdrive. I'm having to drink an extra litre of water a day because I'm so damn dehydrated! Crying openly and publicly used to be terribly un-British but I defy anyone to not get choked up watching our nations' successes and failures. Winners or losers, I know I'm not alone. As I've watched our medal winners stand on the podium and shed a tear or two themselves, I think I'm in very good company.