When the pain sets in and your heart begins to sink, you almost forget you were born a human and not a robot as the weight suddenly becomes too heavy to hold. As you bite down on your quivering lips and inhale through your nose. You then count in fours in your head, exhaling after each fours, making sure that no one notices how much you’re struggling to remain in control.  For one look, one slip up, one question of “are you okay?” will bring you to your knees, the weight will be just too much and you’ll have to let go. But you can’t, not just yet, you have to lay down a strong enough foundation since that’s the only way for you to live amongst humans.

For in order to be human - you learned at a young age when your parents told you “don’t cry, it’s ok” when sometimes it really wasn’t- you must learn how to  hide the pain, how to sustain, how  to carry the heavy weight of it all through the storms. And if you didn’t learn to do so, you’re weak, not good enough, simply not cut out to live amongst humans. Humans are strong; there’s no time to stumble and let it hurt, that’s not good at all!

You count in fours and exhales after every fours when it simply becomes too much, the weight threatening to fall as you feel it slipping off your tiny hands, but you still choose to hold onto that weight. You choose to do so for years after years to the point it doesn’t feel good, to the point you forget what comes after three, to the point you become too tired and you start to realize if  this is what it means to be human, if being human is even worth all this pain. Since never once do you feel happy, the weight is always overbearing and it becomes harder to move as though you are made out of rusted metal. Perhaps, being human means to be a robot since robots are the only ones that can withstand the pain that comes within and not feel the ripples that flow after.

But, you’re not a robot; you’re only human. The weight falls, your hands fly to your face, your body shakes and the tears fall at last. You don’t care if anyone notices or what they have to say, you just let it out and let it hurt. You feel lighter as you cry as if you’re going to fly. How did you not realize this sooner? That this is all you need; the sweet release of your tears. It makes you human.