The Lump in My Throat

A winter day in Colorado can mean so many things for so many reasons. Today, it meant really cold and dreary. All morning the sun fought to peer through the cloud coverage, like a like bulb hidden behind a sheet of cotton. As I sat in my office, looking out the window, the thick, dense clouds felt as if they’d permeated by lungs and enveloped my body as I labored to breathe and feel. However I could feel this lump in my throat. It was the kind of lump that mysteriously appears when you are overwhelmed with emotion while your mind is racing with multiple thoughts (of which include not bursting into tears).

I continued to stare out the window. I could feel the tears forming in my eyes. Just then, I decided today was the day to actually step away from my desk for lunch and go for a walk. I physically felt so numb; the cold air wisping through my dress pants couldn’t phase me – not today. As I walked out of the office building, the cold air immediately kissed my cheeks….I could feel it. At first I was glad I could feel. Then, I thought, “I don’t want to feel. It hurts. I hurt.” Again, my eyes teared up. Despite wearing a coat and gloves mid-day, my emotional pain hadn’t numbed me to the degree that I couldn’t feel the December cold.

As I started to walk, the tears held still in my eyes as if my contacts were like shields across my eyes. “Wheh,” I thought. “It is so cold out here, Lord knows this is not the place to have a ‘cry fest’.” Just as the thought crossed my mind, I felt the warm, thick liquid rollover my bottom eyelashes of my left eye, onto my cheek. Then, a child hood memory came back to me.

I remembered a flickering light. I was taken back to a dark room where an old movie was playing on a projector against a white screen. Sitting next to me were rows of kids ages 5-8 at the YMCA aftercare program. On the old, unstable screen I could see a mound of dirt with a flower growing. It was the original 1957 movie, “Old Yeller.” I don’t know if that could be classified as one of the most tearful scenes in cinema, but my young body had a physical and emotional reaction to it. Watching the boy realize his dog had rabies, shooting Yeller, suffering as he took this morbid step into “manhood,” I distinctly remember this strange pain in my throat while I tried to hold back the tears. I had never experienced this pain before. I couldn’t swallow at first. When I finally could swallow; it didn’t help. It still hurt. Then the tears came rolling down my cheeks in the dark room. The salty tears kissed my lips as I periodically pierced them together, trying to be a "big kid" and not cry.

It wasn’t until I gave in and let those tears roll down my childhood face that the lump in my throat slowly dissipated. As a grown woman, walking through the December cold, I wondered when the pain would stop consuming me physically and emotionally. I want the lump in my throat to go away and stay away.