If you ever want to make me cry...

I'm not a huge sap but I'm also not made out of stone. I cry at some movies, and I roll my eyes at others.

There is one theme, though, that will constantly twist the inside of my throat, and that is the theme of parents. I don't necessarily respond to all themes that come with parents, specifically the negative ones, mostly because I don't identify with the experience of having bad parents. I know I'm extremely lucky in that sense.

I will instantly cry if I see a scene where the parent shows unconditional love to their child. It can come in any form, but it will strike me the most when the parent-child relationship is strained in a normal way (the type that might stick around during the child's teenage years), and is solved in a non-grandiose quiet thing uttered by the parent. This reminds me most of my parents, and it almost always makes me cry.

One of the most poignant quotes uttered by a fictional character that really made me bawl was from an episode of "The West Wing". President Bartlett and his middle daughter experience some tension, and the daughter mentions how she doesn't know how to make the President happy. During a movie screening, he quietly tells her, "The only thing that you ever had to do to make me happy was come home at the end of the day."

TEAR. I mean, I don't stand a chance with a quote like that. I cry like a baby when I hear a line like that because I am so lucky to have parents that feel that way about me. They didn't raise me in a Western way where "YOU'RE SO SPECIAL YOU'RE SO BEAUTIFUL I LOVE YOU HONNNEEYY" was an everyday thing. Their main teaching was to be a responsible person no matter what decision I made. But they allowed me to make my own decision and allowed me to royally fuck up on multiple levels, and still be there for me.

After the test, my parents emailed me to let me know that they were proud because they knew that I had tried as much as I could. No matter the result, I know I am an extremely lucky person to have parents like them who will be happy enough when I come home to them at the end of the day - sometimes figuratively, sometimes literally.