Onscreen, Devi Vishwakumar’s mother was saying good-bye. After four seasons and a lot of personal growth, Devi was finally headed to Princeton, 3,000 miles away from her mom and the television family that my 11-year-old, Raffi, and 8-year-old, Ilya, had cathected onto during our nightly screenings of Never Have I Ever. Raffi cuddled up next to me on the couch, and I buried my nose in his silky hair like I have since he was a baby, which I know he won’t allow me to do for much longer — six months, maybe, or a year if I’m lucky. Devi hugged her mom and thanked her. Nalini, who had remained stern and stoic throughout the series, finally teared up. “Mama, can I hold your hand?” Raffi said, his voice a little quavery. I clutched his hand as the credits ran. I looked over at my husband, Keith, whose eyes were red, and felt … nothing. Not a clench in my chest, not a pang, not an incipient burning behind my eye sockets. It wasn’t totally surprising; by this point, I hadn’t cried for more than three years.
I’d started to suspect that something was wrong with me when a friend I’d known since childhood died and I didn’t shed a tear. I sat at her memorial service and felt something worse than nothing — a calcified layer around where feeling should have been, as if something were trapped in my body with no hope of emerging on its own. I noticed the absence at other times I would usually have sobbed. A late-night fight with my husband, at the point where any other form of communication feels impossible. Fifth-grade graduation, when the valedictorian thanked her teachers for helping her when she was going through chemo. Pixar movies, Call the Midwife, Sarah McLachlan singing “in the arms of the angel” — none of it moved me to tears. I wasn’t a monster, I was pretty sure. Something was wrong with me. I craved the cleansing sensation after the tears stop, that feeling in your sinuses that’s like you’ve been swimming in the ocean. The boneless relief that comes after sobbing has ceased to wrack your body and you can finally rest, absolutely drained. I had no idea what it would take to get back there, the place I’d been effortlessly able to access for the first 41 years of my life. But I would spend the next six months trying. I hoped it might even be fun.
