A Jar Full of Tears

Lately, I’ve been feeling a kind of loneliness I can’t quite define. Still, I hear a voice I thought was long gone. I now regret trying to quiet the little girl inside me. Because more than anything, her story needs to be heard.

Once upon a time, there was a little girl with pink hair, hazel eyes, and a white heart. Her hands were made of stars, and if you looked deeply into her eyes, you could see planets.
She doesn’t remember this about herself, but she used to smile all the time as a baby.
A smile she now carries half-broken.

As she grew up, her shape formed in liquid. The happiness of those she cared for became the shape of hers.
The universe had to intervene. The world wouldn’t let her carry that much love in her heart, simply because it was too dangerous for her.

As she grew, people constantly told her she was too naive, like it was a flaw. Over time, it became the thing she hated hearing the most.
Another thing she hated was lying. Even if she tried, her face was too transparent to hide emotions.

Then the universe settled. Her soul was precious, yes, but not the kind that would be valued in the world she lived in. So it took the stars from her hands, hid the planets in her eyes, turned her hair brown, and broke her heart repeatedly.

Bit by bit, she began to feel a black stain on her soul. A stain that grew bigger every time she tried to be her old self. Every time she acted selflessly, the stain grew. Every time she opened her heart, it deepened.
With every disappointment, she felt ashamed of herself because it meant she still cared.

She carried a disease. A disease of loving too deeply.
She knew that if she simply stopped loving, her misery would end.
Yet she couldn’t bring herself to betray her nature.

She thought she wasn’t alone. That there were others like her who came from the Planet Edenheart. She believed she met some of them, each at different stages of life. For a moment, they acted like they were one of her own. They made her believe again, whispering only echoes, always the same lies:

“I see you. I understand you. I’m not going to leave you.”

Those were the moments she felt resurrected.
In reality, she was only being distracted while pieces of her soul were being stolen, one by one, by a ‘rescuer.’
They were experts at saying the right thing without ever meaning it.

Yet for her, it was never them to blame.
The fault was always hers to take.
With every piece of her soul she lost, she honoured it with a single drop of a tear and stored it in the same jar.

The story never changed its course.
The beginnings always felt like endings, yet endings never felt like beginnings.
The act of the unchosen was untouched by the understanding of another.

Even so, the thieves left something behind.
They couldn’t steal her dreams because they were too big for them to carry.

So she dreamt.
Dreamt of a world where she didn’t have to hide her heart.
A world that still had hope.

In time, even that became too painful.
Her reality had become the root of her suffering.

One day, she couldn’t carry the damage she had endured.
The stain had spread everywhere.
It blurred her vision, messed with her mind, shattered her heart, and crushed her soul into the ground.

She never became the same person again.
The only thing she was left with was a jar full of tears.

On every full moon, the jar filled with eternal whiteness.
She, the mother before mothers, keeper of tides, blood, and return. Whose silence whispered the aching weight of the tears to the sea, and made it rise.
Her tears redrew the map.
The moon became the compass and rewrote the stars in her name.
A sacred act of keeping memory alive.

Home was never a place she could go back to.
It was who she became after the breaking.

I wish I had been there to remind her of her smile.
And to smile back.
All I am left to say is these words:

Dear little girl,
I’m really sorry for being the one who let you down.
I know I am the biggest thief of all.
Because even when I left, I made you believe I would come back for you. Leaving you to look for the love I was meant to give.

All I can do is carry on with the same black stain, only smaller.
This time to give me strength, reminding me of everything we’ve been through.
With whatever is left we will step forward.
In time, even the eyes learn to see in the dark.

I’m not going to hope for better days, because I’ve seen what hope has done to you.
I’ll just be and honour the sacred secrecy that life gifted me.
Much like the nature of imperfection becoming whole.

I love you, and I always will.