The tears come. Sometimes they are expected and sometimes they hit without invitation or warning. It’s a very helpless feeling when the walls you have built up crumble and bury your coping mechanisms underneath. All of a sudden you forget how you’ve been waking up each day; laughing with your children; chatting with your friends…breathing. When you’re in the midst of the tears – your eyes are red, your nose is running and you can’t catch your breath – it feels never ending. It feels like all of the ‘normal’ you have worked so hard for is wiped out with one emotional moment. But then it slows. Eventually your eyes dry, the sniffles slow and you breathe normally yet again. You start to reconstruct your safety walls and remember how to get out of bed. Something makes you smile; something makes you laugh. Then you remember that this crazy collection of emotions means you are alive and so you start living again. And you move on…until the next time the tears come.