I cry for fictional characters

In my head, I am tough.  I'm a no-nonsense kind who can take on anything and everyone.  I don't show emotion, I don't have emotion.

In reality? I'm a marshmellow. (No, I'm not just talking about my tummy.)  In reality, I am over-emotive.  I show everything that flits through my mind.  When I have an emotion, I feel it deeply for however long I have it.  That can be as little as three seconds or as long as many years.

That is why I can honestly say "That's my favourite..." and mean it when I say it again about something else.

It also means I am the type of woman that I dislike intensely.  I cry.  At everything.

You think I'm over exaggerating.  Yeah, well, you would be wrong.  I have cried at the openning memorial played at the beginning of football games.  Even when I've seen it 30 times before.  I have cried at commercials.

I cried when Lisa Simpson ran alongside the train as her favourite teacher rode out of site.
I'm particularly embarrassed about that one.

I have cried at almost every book, every movie, every drama TV series (including some comedies), and at many songs.  Including ones by Taylor Swift. (Okay, I'm more embarrassed about that.)

It is often inconvenient to be the only person in a full movie theatre sobbing over a happy ending.  It makes me look unbalanced and as though I need to up my medication.  Which, in the past, has been true, but not always the case.

The problem is: I can always identify with the characters.  I can feel their pain, I have been in a situation where what that character is going through parallels something I have gone through.  And it takes over.

As I sat through Crazy, Stupid, Love last night, I had one of those moments.  Okay, to be honest, it was the last 45 minutes.  I sat there in the dark, wiping tears away as I ached in agony for the pain of each character on screen.  Even when they were happy, even when I laughed so hard I thought I would hurt myself, I couldn't stop crying.  I was there for them in each emotion, but I was also in the middle of my own emotional turmoil because of everything that has ever happened to me in my entire life.

It is exhausting.

I left the theatre having thoroughly enjoined the show and will be putting on my list of movies I watch over and over again.  I will likely cry each and every time I watch it too.

I will love every second of it.