Tears

She is 5 years old. She is crying. An older, deeper voice than hers speaks soft words of comfort and warm wide arms wrap around her and she is held tight as her little fists ball into her eyes and she tries to pull her knees closer to her chest. The misery is all she can feel and creates her whole world. In a few moments, the misery will be a vanished memory and the world will exist within a sphere of whatever emotion grips her at that time. But for here, and for now, she is crying and she can't stop.

She is 10 years old. She is crying. The stinging insults and jeers of her so-called friends and sisters still hound her mind just as they did as she ran sobbing from the yard, back into her house, into her room, and finally into the corner she is now curled up in. She tries to remember that she isn't all the nasty things they said. That she loves her sisters. That she loves her friends. But the betrayal is overwhelming in her young mind. The feeling of being rejected and mocked. In some part of her mind she knows that this is just one more episode, just one more time to add to her collection of broken memories, and that it will pass and she will keep living and find a way to happiness of some form or another. But for here, and for now, she is crying and she can't stop.

She is 16 years old. She is crying. The girl she loves, that she wants to love her back, she just realized cannot give her what she needs. The overwhelming devotion and love she feels towards this girl isn't returned. The hopeful leap in her heart she feels every time her phone rings, hoping it is her calling, is not felt by the other. A part of her mind logically reminds her that she has no reason to expect any more than casual friendship from this girl, and certainly not the bond that she wants to form with her. The insistent pull of the girl on her mind is foolish and signs of an unhealthy obsession, she knows. But she can't not love her. And she can't not want her. And she can't have her. She knows that in a few hours the tears will fade and this broken moment will become a memory of pain to remind her to smile when she next sees her love. But for here, and for now, she is crying and she can't stop.

She is 20 years old. She is not crying. The hopelessness she feels now is not even an emotion to her, it is a way of life. The loneliness, abandonment, rejection, knowing she isn't good enough, that she's tainted and unclean, have simply sunk into her skin like ink, etching the fragments of her broken future into an unrecognizable mural that she does not want or care about. She has already passed the point in her life she thought she would live to, and now she is living on borrowed time, stolen from the ashes of bridges she's burned and ideals she's sacrificed. The small joys she finds serve to stimulate her brain into forgetting the tide of pain for a moment or two, but it comes back. It always comes back. As she sits quietly in her dark corner and stares into the black shadows on her wall that subtly move with evil purpose she cannot feel the fear, or the pain, or anything. The abyss of her memories swallows each moment in silent acceptance. And for here, and for now, she is not crying and she can't remember how.

She is 26 years old. She is crying. The pain and loss and fear of years crash into her over and over with the merciless force which she'd used to suppress and hide them for so long. There is no respite for her running feet, no hiding place for her wild staring eyes, no calm for her ragged shallow breath. Every belief of her world has died, every foundation has cracked. Simple moaning gasps tear from her throat as she runs. She cannot form words enough even to plead. And even here, in the depths of agony, she cannot scream. No release, just torturous memories dragging up and over here, combining with the terror and loss so fresh in her mind to cause the street before her to blur and waver and phase. She stumbles, she falls, she is leaning against a wall. She scrambles backwards into the darkest corner she can find and pulls her knees up to her chest and sobs helplessly. But there are no comforting arms now. No soothing voice to bring her back. The dark presses in, shattering her mind and her memories with a crushing pressure greater than she's ever experienced or imagined possible. No help comes. And for here, and for now, she is crying and she knows she can't ever stop.