On Getting Choked Up

Everybody cries sometime.

Why is it so hard to talk when you are about to cry?

I could say that the sensation of being choked up, of being unable to speak due to sadness or strong emotion, is merely the body’s natural physiological reaction to acute psychological stress, that our bodies -specifically the autonomic nervous system- increases our oxygen intake by increasing our heart beat and widening the glottis, and that lump we feel is caused by us fighting our own reflexive muscular compression as we swallow. 

I could say that it is a response hardwired into our systems, that this is how we are pre-programmed.

Yet that would compare us to mere machinery instead of beings that experience life on both a physical and an emotional level. But we experience life with our bodies as well as our souls, and thus you and I are no mere mechanical beings. 

No, we are so much more.

And so I thank the crushing weight of the things you say and the lump in my throat and the tears that escape despite my best efforts to contain them and the words that I desperately want to say but can’t because they’re trapped in my throat where they will lay down and die without a sound and the wrenching feeling in my heart, for reminding me that I am more than just a machine. 

Thank you,

For allowing me to feel.