Why I Cry

I suppose you might think I'm a bimbo. Or a silly bint. Or a pissy bitch who gets mad every few seconds. Or a pathetic weak and weepy damsel-in-distress-that-isn't-really-real-distress.

Well, you're entitled to your own opinion and I to mine. But that isn't really the issue here.

You could say I'm here to talk about some of the things that happened last year. And I am. But mostly I'm here to talk because I need to talk. Because I have to talk.

I've heard that in theory there two ways in which a person can react to a death of someone close to them. In the first, the person completely shuts off from others, or at least totally refrains from talking about the death and their feelings. Their feelings build up, until eventually they either have a furious outburst or break down emotionally. Kind of like a bottle of coke being shaken until the fizz pops the lid.

In the second, the person talks, or writes, or tries, in some way, to express everything that is ripping or writhing through their minds. It's a long and gruelling process. But eventually, all the gas seeps from the coke; all the black spots are exorcised from your mind, and you are able to move on whilst carrying all the memories by your side.

What I went through with Cedric was a mixture of both processes. On the one hand I couldn't really talk about what happened properly - I even shut myself off from my friends for a few days, and even when I opened up again I felt as if the moment I opened my mouth to talk about his death I'd crumble into pieces. If I let out my feelings, even to myself, I wouldn't be able to function properly - and I couldn't let that happen. Being a Ravenclaw is all about having control.

Whilst I couldn't sort through the tangle of feelings that was my mind however, I could cry, and I did. Like in the Great Hall at the end of fifth year, for example. But maybe the problem was that whilst I was grieving, I wasn't sure what I was grieving for. And once the summer began I couldn't do even that.

You're probably all going "yeah, yeah, the girl's acting melodramatic again. Will she stop whining about that high-school relationship already? And if she really liked the guy we can understand why she'd have felt sad, but can't she have gotten over it by now?"

Well, let me explain something about my family. I was going to use the term "us Chinese" at first, but then I realized that that wouldn't be accurate, or fair. You see my parents are very caring and love me a lot, but they are also conservative. And for a moment I was going to link this conservativeness to our race, but then I realized this wasn't at all true. Tradition is something that can appear in (or not appear in), and influence, any family or person or culture, taking on its own individual shape in each case.

So I'll explain my family, and only my family. We're conservative, and follow tradition, which has in fact been proven to have its own benefits from time to time. But there are certain things we don't do, not even behind closed doors, and certain taboos that we just don't talk about.

I've mentioned before that my parents care about me a lot. But maybe the problem is that they weren't entirely sure how to care about me when I came home last year, not shattered but more tense and confused and with nothing to do. They could see my pain, and did their best to try and relieve it; cooking my favourite meal, sitting by me when I watched TV, letting me polish my broom all day. But they simply couldn't talk about it with me.

Maybe my parents have a taboo after talking about "bad issues" like death with "children". Maybe it's something that needs to be swept under the carpet so everyone can pretend it never happened. But I think the real reason they acted like they never knew Cedric's death had happened was because of the way in which he allegedly died.

Consider this: you have spent the last fourteen years of your life believing that the thing you most fear has gone. Then, one day when you're simply living your shadow-free life, the bomb drops and someone tells you its come back again. How are you going to react?

But wait - it gets worse. Some one claims that it's back, but you only have their word for it. Yet you can't just laugh it off - because it really matters to you - because your fear is real, and personal.

And then your daughter's boyfriend, that pleasant-looking boy whose photos you've seen- was the one who was allegedly killed by the thing that's allegedly come back. Doesn't look so good, does it?

But he can't have been killed by that thing, or it means that thing exists. And you can't accept that just yet. Especially when there isn't solid proof, and believing in it right now means you won't be able to function at all. So you have to do what you can to survive.

You can't pretend that the boy never died though. That would be cruel to your daughter. So instead you take away the photos she sent you, and act like he never existed. That way, at least your world can make sense.

And deep down, you do this because you are afraid.

Once I realised what their game was I played along with it, partly because it was easier, partly because I thought it was what I wanted too. So I went to all the activities they signed my up for, kept myself busy with flying and felt entirely safe and tucked away from everything, outside and inside.

And I stopped my crying once I got home. And I felt proud, because in the rare moments I'd acknowledged that something had happened before, I saw that'd I'd managed to grow and get over it.

Then school started. And the moment I'd gotten onto the train I realised that I'd made a mistake in distancing myself from everything that had happened before during the summer.

I only had to sit down on my seat for the flashbacks to start flooding in: Cedric, coming over to my carriage and speaking to me for the first time; me, wordlessly staring at the ceiling with tears in my eyes on the journey back.

It only got worse when we arrived at school. It wasn't a continuous thing, of course. Maybe it is the smaller things that hurt us the most. I'd walk in the grounds and suddenly remember the time we'd sat together under a tree. I'd open a textbook and remember the time we'd studied together. Whilst Cedric was nowhere in my life this summer, suddenly I could see him everywhere.

And every time I saw him, I'd cry, a little. I hadn't stopped my grieving process in any way; I'd simply delayed it. And I found myself suddenly wracked with an emotion I couldn't explain and was ashamed of having.

You could say I have some personality flaws, and a communication problem is one of the greater ones. After all the attention and care people had given me, after all the support I'd had last year, I found myself needing it more than ever now. And I also found myself unable to express this to anyone - and how could I, when they'd offered me so much help at the end of last year and I'd been too confused to acknowledge or properly accept it?

I was also confused with my own feelings and how to deal with them. I'd really cared about Cedric, but, contrary to popular belief, we'd never been engaged or said "I love you" or anything like that. You could say that whilst our relationship was definitely romantic we'd never actually reached the stage where we could define our feelings properly yet.

And death - how are you meant to react when some one you know dies? How is it ever fair that some one should die when they had barely started their life, and had everything to live for? How could something be so evil as to kill a boy for no apparent reason at all? Why didn't anything intervene when something so unfair had happened?

And the thing that had killed Cedric. It was an ambiguity unto itself, right until the end of sixth year when Fudge finally admitted that it had come back. Whilst I believed Dumbledore when he told us that it had returned, I could never acknowledge it a hundred percent. And what would we do if it was back now?

Maybe I sound like someone trying pathetically to justify myself and my behaviour last year. I guess what I really want to say is that crying isn't just a way of expressing sadness, unhappiness, blah blah. Crying can also represent pain, frustration, confusion and the sheer anguish of the soul when it feels all of these things but is unable to express them. Nor are tears simply superficial droplets that form on the surface of your eyes and drip down the outermost layer of your skin. Much as I hate to sound melodramatic, it goes much deeper than that. Tears are a kind of output, the squeezed-out creation of internal tension, a practical outlet that sometimes seems detached from the mind and the real self as we know it. And, much as I hate to say it, whenever a tear is squeezed out it exorcises a tiny measure of the sharp strain within.

It might have helped if my parents had talked to me about it, of course, but I can hardly blame them when it is obvious that they were so afraid. Nobody's perfect, and they're not either, so maybe they felt that by "sheltering" me from our fears they were doing the best they could for me. And I can never resent them when it was also my fault for never letting them know that deep down I had a need to talk.

The crying-and-finally-getting-to-work-out-my-messed-up-feelings part aside, there were other issues I'd dealt with badly in sixth year. Denial is another flaw of mine, and so are some misplaced values. For example, I know that some people will consider me good-looking, and I can't help feeling a sense of pride at that. I also have this internal drive to want to be good at everything: get good grades, win the Quidditch Cup for the team, manage my feelings well, have a mature relationship with a boy...

Or maybe it's the fact that I place a small amount of self-worth on my ability to attract or be with a boy. It's another aspect of my character that now, with hindsight, I wish I didn't have. That brief thing I had with Michael Corner at the end of last year was a result of that - oh, you're feeling worthless? Try getting together with a guy! See? He likes you! You're not entirely useless!

Harry, though. Now Harry was an entirely different matter. I think the whole issue started as one of denial. I'd always seen him as a nice boy, just a little special because he was famous, but that was it. I had suspicions about him having a crush on me in fifth year, and felt quite guilty when I'd turned him down for the ball as I could see how hard it had been for him to ask me (but I couldn't say yes when I didn't like him, could I? I spend a lot of time lying to myself, but I find it much harder to lie to others).

Then, in sixth year, news spread that Harry had seen Cedric die, and duelled with You-Know-Who. And I started remembering about how he'd liked me before. And then I heard about the DA...

Yes, I still feel guilty about how insensitive and stupid I'd been with him, when obviously he was recovering from Cedric's death too, and I wasn't thinking enough about what I was feeling either. I wouldn't say I was on the rebound, but he sounded so brave, and he'd duelled with You-Know-Who and when we talked it seemed so right, seemed to make so much sense...

You could say I was liking the idea of him more than the boy himself. And that's what I'm really ashamed of. I'd always liked to think of myself as someone who looked beyond stereotypes and assumptions, and there I was, seeing what I wanted to see (a nice boy who liked me and symbolised everything against you-know-who) instead of what was really there (a drained boy who had been through a lot and was dealing with even more).

And of course there was guilt and tension on both sides too. It was like - Oh there's Harry and he seems so nice and it really seems to make sense - do I like him? But how could I do that - what about Cedric - didn't I love Cedric? Wait-but did I love Cedric? Why am I insulting his memory so? What stage of our relationship were we in back then? How should I be acting now? How do I feel about Harry?

And we never really talked about Cedric, or our feelings. Once again, my communication problem kicked in, and instead of trying to be honest and talk to him I ended up playing the silly games that some girls feel safer playing: being angry about him meeting Hermione, trying to make him jealous about Cedric. It was a relationship (if you could call our talks, one date, and countless arguments a relationship at all) doomed from the start, and it only ended up hurting both of us more.

Well, I can hardly change what's happened now and I just hope that we'll both be able to focus on more important things next year- something tells me that things are going to take a turn for the darker and they'll be staying that way for a while. I hope that someday I'll be able to be proper friends with Harry, and talk to him for who he really is, not what everyone believes him to be. I hope that I'll be able to contribute in some way in the coming Battle, or at least be there to support others when they need it.

And on a personal level, I hope that I'll never shut myself away again, that I'll learn what my true feelings are and let them flow freely. I want to know when I feel sad, know when I feel confused, and know when I need help and know how to ask for it properly. I want to be able to grow and mature from everything that's happened last year and at least be a more self-aware person because of it. I want to be able to have more confidence in myself, and place my self-worth on something more important than what a boy thinks of me. I want to be honest to myself and to everyone around me who's worthy of my honesty. I want to be able know why I cry, when I'm crying, or at least know when I don't know why I cry, and accept that that's alright.

And I'm going to start right now by walking out of my room, down the stairs, and telling my parents that this summer I want to talk to them, I want to talk about Cedric's death, I want to talk about Voldemort and I want to talk about my feelings.