When you cry in public

Not from emotional pain, but from that pain that comes from being the most clutzy person in the world.  Last night, S and I had to do our grocery shopping, which, let me tell you, is an injury waiting to happen for me.
Relatively early into the trip, I went to get the hard rolls for our dinner sandwiches.  One second, I was a cranky, starving person reaching for a roll, and the next I was looking at my thumb, dumbstruck.  I'm not really sure WHAT happened, just that I hit my thumb on something and it wasn't good.  There was blood, that's how not good it was.  I think I panicked, because S wasn't with me.  He was at the deli procuring the meat for the sandwiches.  So I think I walked over there (and at this point, I was determined not to cry, even though it felt like my nail was going to come off my thumb) and handed him the rolls.  He could tell something was wrong, and I showed him my thumb. 

It's pretty scary.  (I think, but I'm a baby.) The nail is broken pretty low down on the thumb--which is why it bled--and I think it was pretty clear that I needed a band-aid.  S and I finished the process at the deli (during which tears were, yes, streaming down my face), and I insisted that we go break open a box of band-aids (we did buy them, yes) and apply it.  But at this point, my thumb was throbbing in pain, and the thought of trying to clip the nail off was making me feel woozy. 

So I stopped crying, we finished the shopping trip (which due to the Tide, was a doozy), and we came home and ate dinner.  At which point S insisted that I look at the injury, wash the area, and attempt to clip the nail.  Oh, I tried.  But all I did was cry, a lot.  I washed it, yeah, but I couldn't clip it.  I couldn't.  Now my thumb is bandaged, and I missed yoga this morning because there is NO way.  The thumb is still hurting, and now I'm operating without a thumb.  I have to keep it bandaged, of course, because I don't want the hangnail to catch on anything.  I haven't looked at it yet this morning, because I'm scared.  Dude, I'm a baby.

But I sincerely hate crying in public, no matter what the reason.  I think that most of us hate it.  Mostly, I think I don't want people to think that I'm having some sort of breakdown.  I want to show people my thumb and say, "Look, this is why I'm crying!"  Crying in public is just one way of totally ignorning society's unwritten rules; it breaks the barriers of comfort.  And as I was crying in the Jewel, I knew that people were wondering.  I would have been had I seen someone doing what I was doing.  It's embarrassing; it's easy to be embarrassed for people crying in public.

Now I have to bite the bullet and look at my thumb.

Comments

Ouch! I tend to cry in public, especially in tense confrontations with mean bosses. That has always been my nemesis. That said, I wouldn't be ashamed at all of crying because of an injury. Be sure to put Neosporin on it! S.N.