Alright girls, we all do it. Strangely enough, I think less of us will admit to this than masturbation. More hands will rise when asked if they watch chick on chick porn than when asked if they do this. This is the sort of thing we really don’t want anyone to know about.

What’s this?

Soundtracking our sadness.

Yup. I’ve playlisted my pain more than I want to admit, and have walked in on friends doing it often. No matter who the perpetrator is, it always looks the same; sad figure lying languid on a bed, fully clothed, eyes leaking, while Rufus warbles or Iron and Wine whines or Kelly Clarkson cries. A sad scene made even sadder by the underscore.

Even those of us who don’t fancy ourselves drama queens have, once or twice, tearfully sat at our computer compiling a “Sad” mix and retreating back to our beds to moan over our handiwork. Come on, Love, admit it. Sometimes you download that song because you know, you know, it’s gonna come in handy the next time you need to have a good old fashioned cry.

Hell, I’ll start I Am Spartacus-ing by owning up to the fact that during a particularity painful break-up, I was listening to any and all sad music I could compile. My dorm room was a virtual den of misery and pain, and I spent many an hour holed up in that den, squishing my face into a pillow and crying along to Ani and Fiona.

Only after I was partially out of break-up hell did I realize soundtracking my sadness was perhaps not the healthiest thing. As romantic and theatrical as it was, I was actually keeping myself in a stagnant state of ache when I would have otherwise been okay. The music was making me feel like I was in a movie, and therefore could have overblown, movie-like emotions. Life was tragic, and I was just a young Angelina Jole letting mascaera drip down my face in perfect anguish.

We all deserve our cry time, but over-exposure can getcha. No scriptwriter is coming to write you a beautiful ending, and if you languish too long in some warped notion of exquisite melancholy, there’s a potential to drown.

So let’s make a pact, sweethearts. Let’s give ourselves time to indulge, but then stand up, brush our shapely bodies off, and get back out there. Music can get us through a lot of stuff, but ultimately, it’s our own heads and hearts that save us.

Plus, I bet even Angelina looks bloated after hours of crying with no make-up artist and hairdresser to save her.