Teary Eyed. Pause.

I tend to get teary eyed when it comes to TV shows or movies. Notice that I only said teary eyed and also TV or movies. I don't tend to actually cry (although there are times), and I don't tend to do anything over books.

I get teary eyed over any sort of strong emotion. Even if I'm really happy, there will be tears in my eyes. That's just how my body involuntarily reacts to strong emotion. However, I've also adapted really well to immediately avoid the situation and stop myself before it becomes full on crying. That is extremely rare for me, and this avoidance thing I do is exactly why I only tend to full on cry when I have to ability to pause what I'm watching.

Because I always pause what I'm watching when I start getting sad. I pause it and probably get up to walk around and calm myself down before I press play again. That's why I never cry while reading. I set the book down if I'm coming even remotely close. It slows down my reading time, yes, but it does keep me from crying.

If I'm watching something with other people, that isn't as easy to do, and that means I tend to cry more. The only way I don't is if we're making some sort of conversation that works as the same type of distraction for me as pausing normally would.

That's why it tends to take me twice as long as it should to watch an episode of something or read one chapter of a book. I'm pausing all the time. Even when it's a moment that's making me unbearably happy, I'm still pausing to react to it before I continue on.

It's just what I do all the time now, and I'm not really sure how it all started. I've never really talked to anyone about how I do this. I only really thought about how often I do it about a year ago. I'm not sure if it's something that others would see as very strange or not that out of the ordinary.

I have tried to make myself stop because I want to be able to just sit still and focus better, but so far those attempts have failed. I guess I'm just going to keep doing it for the foreseeable future.