it's okay. they're just tears

I always dread coming to the end of a very good book.

And as I sat there, bracing myself for those last pages of The Time Traveller's Wife with Pepe and Fiona sleeping cluelessly on either side of me, I couldn't help but cry.

I have cried over movies, but never over a book. Maybe it was just the last of the fever. Maybe I was crying for different reasons. I really believe that my heart is at least slightly - if not permanently - bruised. Like an otherwise functional brain with latent concussion symptoms. Sometimes, it only takes one sharp knock to bring all the pain gushing to the surface. It happened when Tigger died this Summer. It happened the day I burst into tears in the limousine the day my grandfather died so many, many years ago. Or the time I started sobbing uncontrollably to Paranoid Android, just sitting there at the red light while the words "rain down" just tore at my insides.

I'm not sure if I dread these shocks or look forward to them. The sad truth is that life doesn't really afford you the choice. My hope is that the next will be nothing more than the last heart-wrenching pages of another great book.