Jeers for tears

 As a convicted felon, and a prison inmate, I'm obviously a bad ass, hardened thug. OK, that may not be entirely true. I have not a single tattoo, and spend several hours a week with my head buried in my pillow, sobbing.

Needless to say, it's not so cool to be caught crying like a baby in prison. I must go to great lengths to conceal my tears and have taken extra long showers just to have a place to cry, uninterrupted.

Since this has all begun some year and a half ago, I must have expelled my body mass in tears several times over. So why am I still here? Shouldn't I have dissolved away by now into a slightly salty puddle of water?

I have lost a significant amount of weight, but I suspect that it's more due to small amounts of crappy food and exercise than to the plethora of tears that I have shed.

And what is the point of crying anyway? I'd like to think that my tears are "cleansing my soul" or purging toxic chemicals or negative emotions from my body. But the truth is I rarely feel any better after having a good cry. This doesn't prevent the tears from coming back again and again.

I think, perhaps, that I may have a future in acting, as the "man crying like a baby," as it's quite easy for me to turn on the water works at will. It's a little harder to turn it off and thus far impossible to prevent it completely.

My brother suggested that there is some value in crying, particularly when crying with someone who loves and supports you. To be fair, there may be some merit there, I actually felt better after crying in his presence.

But there is a significant shortage of "loving" and "supportive" individuals in the "joint," and my tears seem to create little solace.

They seem rather useless and embarrassing. They don't change a damn thing, yet they continue to flow like the Nile through the desert. Perhaps they can be captured to irrigate this parched land in which I am incarcerated. Maybe I can make some money for them. But overall, it seems like a rather pointless endeavor and a useless commodity.