Tear Switch

When I was born I was already crying the wrong tears. You see, depending on the emotion that we’re feeling, each tear is different. Each tear holds the exact emotion that caused the tear to form. The exact feeling that flowed through your brain at the exact moment in which that beautiful little raindrop of your DNA falls down your cheek. Each tear, each emotion, has its own chemistry.

When I cry tears of bitterness my face has always been known to turn red. This has always been a fact. My mother told me once when I was young that the red spots were the very same birth marks I was born with. And so, I was born crying the wrong tears. I was born crying these sad, bitter, acidic tears that scarred and burned my face. I was sad to be brought into this world before I had even tasted it, already jumping to assumptions. I thought I knew my world would be a dark one. And maybe it was, but only at first. Only until I met you, and you turned on the light; a switch that had been there all along, but I was dead asleep, too deep in depression to look for it.

I never knew any other sort of tears. The only tears I knew for the longest time, were the kind that burned my face. The acidic salty sadness I’d known so well, it was more of a fact than a question. I am going to cry, and when I cry, my face will turn red. That was simply a fact.

When I met you I slowly discovered other tears. I laid with you in bed one night and laughed so hard at something you said that my tears welled up, rolling down my face without my permission. “What are you crying for?”

My face didn’t turn red, though. Maybe not every tear is a traitor.

Then next, when I simply thought of you on the other side of the world without me, and you moved me to tears. Confusion was the first thing that set in my mind; why can I love you so deeply with just a memory? Just a thought? Just the thought of your scent, thought of your voice, whisper of your name? Nothing happened to remind me of your spirit, but I’m suddenly unable to get you off my mind. Your beautiful figure has been dancing through my head all day while you’re a world away and we’re half a century apart and, god, things are confusing but, god, I’ll always love you. So it’s okay.

When I thought of you, thought of this, thought of us, my gentle tears flowed. And flowed. And flowed. They didn’t stop, but it was okay. It felt good. A release, a rush, energy with laughter and love. This was a new type of tear. I thought of you and I felt love.

(And, yes, I’ve cried over you before. Cried over missing you, cried over disagreements, misunderstandings, cried over the scenarios that my anxiety creates when you aren’t around to dispel them...but when I look, my face is crimson red. It’s not a new tear. Sorrow is something I know well. That’s never a lesson I needed to be taught.)

I open my eyes and stand up, picking myself out of the deep hole that is my trance of love. My head is light, like our love. Like the tension between us. Like your fingers on my chin. Like our soul dancing through the cosmos. I look in the mirror and my face comes into view. Of course, it isn’t red.

I came into this world crying the wrong tears. When I came into this world I was a bitter biter who was just waiting for the sky to fall. When I came into this world I knew I would have to fight, and so I fought. I do not regret fighting. I do not regret being cold and bitter when I had to be. My lighter soul might have popped out without my willing, but for the most part? I kicked ass. I took names.

But when I met you, I knew your name was the last I’d ever take.

I will leave this world crying the right tears. Tears of love and joy. That is thanks to you. Thanks to you I am lighter. Thanks you to I can be happy, not bitter. Thanks to you, I am not a biter. Not even a fighter. Thanks to you, I can soften my arguments. Thanks to you, I can just not care. Thanks to you, I can be mild when I want to be, need to be. Thanks to you, I am so much more. I am full. I am everything. I am love. I am a person, not a thought, not the thought of a person who’s trying not to be the person in their true, true heart.

Thanks to you, I have found me.

Thank you for awakening my light.