"Salty tears have a communicative power beyond words and reason. But what happens when the waterworks are nothing but crocodile tears, caused by exhaustion, frustration or even a stubborn onion?
In Roman times, when their husbands went to sea, sailors’ wives used to keep “tear bottles” to capture their watery woe. When the sailors returned, they could literally measure how much their wives had really missed them: It was a pretty, albeit controlling, idea. But what was to stop the women from filling the jar with the seawater their loves had sailed away on? It’s as salty as tears, and it would certainly withstand a taste test.
People don’t have to be sad to cry. If I’d been a Roman sailor’s wife, it would’ve been an easy deceit: When I’m tired, I can cry enough to fill a whole tear bottle without the slightest tinge of sadness. After all, tears can express the whole gamut of human emotion, and most of them don’t deal with despair: They can represent ecstasy and joy right across the spectrum to fear, frustration, shock, powerlessness, anger and empathy. But it’s exhaustion that brings me to tears."
Read the rest of the essay here
Words by Romy Ash Photograph by Anja Verdugo for Kinfolk.
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