Strength

Crying is the body speaking. When words fail, the eyes speak for them. Tears are strange. They are water, yet they often feel heavier than any language. You can rehearse 'I'm okay' a hundred times in your mind, but the moment a single tear falls, all pretense shatters instantly. Tears are irrational, unpredictable, and always appear when you least want them to – on the subway, in a meeting, during an argument, or late at night when you're trying to sleep. As a child, crying was about getting something. Crying after falling was to get an adult to help; crying after being scolded was to make the other person soften. Those tears had a purpose, like a small remote control that, when pressed, made the world pause for a moment. Crying as an adult is often for an inexpressible sense of loss. It's not to make someone come back, nor for someone to see; it's simply because the drawer in your heart that holds emotions is full and needs to be opened. You might hide in the bathroom and cry with the faucet running at full blast; you might cry while walking on the street, wearing a mask and pretending to have allergies; you might wake up in the middle of the night and cry, then wipe your tears and roll over to sleep. These tears have no audience, no applause, no tissues. They just quietly come and quietly go. But you know what? After every cry, the sky seems to brighten a little. Not because the problem is solved, but because your body has cleared something out. Like a street after rain, it's wet, but the air is clean. Those emotions you thought you couldn't get past become a little lighter after the tears have flowed.