Imagine if you kept the plug in your sink in all the time. Imagine if you kept turning on the faucet but never let it go down the drain. It wouldn't take very long before your bathroom floor was flooding with water. Enough water to potentially cause damage to your walls.

Imagine filling a waterballoon. You eventually have to pull away to leave enough room to tie its knot. If you let the water keep accumulating inside, that pop is bound to come. And that pop is going to make a mess.

In each scenario there comes a breaking point, and that breaking point tends to be that much more painful. Tends to induce a much bigger mess.

The same thing can be said about retained tears. You can only bottle so much inside, before you explode. Before you break. Before you're forced to release some it.

The following is a short excerpt from one my novel If I Knew Then; the character's feelings a reflection of my own.

A big part of my struggles rested in the idea that I didn't want to admit the extent of my sadness, when I couldn't pinpoint a reason to feel so dejected. Sometimes I thought that having a picture-perfect life made my emotional welfare worse, as I couldn't imagine how things would get better if I couldn't even enjoy myself when I was blessed.

For the longest time, I berated myself for feeling the urge to cry. Berated myself, because my life is so blessed compared to the struggles some of my peers have to face. In comparison to their problems, I didn't have a validreason to cry. (Please not the italicization of the word valid).

I didn't think my problems worthy of shedding tears. I felt weak or selfish for succumbing to the sadness despite all the blessings in my life.

So, I held everything in. I told myself it wasn't right to waste such a great life on unpleasant emotions.

I didn't cry.

With a dry face and heavy chest, I forced a smile.

I told myself it was easy to stay afloat, no matter the internal sense of drowning.

When I finally let myself cry about the things I told myself weren't worth crying about, I thought I'd never stop. The tears were endless. I probably cried most of that vacation week, in which I isolated myself to do some reflecting.

But I don't hold a single regret towards all those shed tears. Because when they finally slowed, I had never felt so light.

If you take anything from this post, let it be a reminder that you are allowed to cry. You are allowed to feel all the emotions swirling in your chest; even the unpleasant ones.

You need to feel these emotions. Because as much as we wish they would, they don't just go away on their own. You have to consciously acknowledge them so that you can work on healing them.

There's nothing weak about crying.

Emotions are not weaknesses. Emotions are what differ humans from robots.

If I've learned anything, it's that crying actually comes with great strength and courage.

When the tears threaten to come to surface, let them. Release them.

Unshed tears, come with a heaviness and sense of drowning.

Allow yourself the freedom of being human and feeling human emotions.