I've Cried My Love A River

I used to be a dried up riverbed.
Desert sand ran in my veins.
I was the wasteland, the dust bowl of my sadness.
And somewhere inside for all those years, the waters rose, the storm brewed.
I never really noticed.
Until one day I cracked down the middle like a clay pot,
And everyone got to see the rainstorm of my tears.
They fell with all the force of a roll of thunder,
And all the searing heat of a lightning strike,
And all the hopeless endless downpour of a monsoon.
They fell and woke me up, and in my anguish little cracks spidered out until I was a web of fissures,
And of a sudden I fell away.
It feels odd to have no shell anymore,
It feels strange to cry in front of strangers when they pry into my heart.
I was never that girl.
I was a desert, dry as bone bleached by the sun, and as hard, and as abused.
And now I am a river, fed by the rain of my troubles drumming on my back, and my feelings show on my face not because I cannot stop them but because I no longer have the will to.
For months I was tired, and when I stopped drowning I realized that there was no going back.
I cannot drag myself to dry land, and so I must learn to swim the waters of myself, however deep, however dark, however painful.
I must learn to hold my breath, and let the tears fall when they will.
I am a river.
Stopping the tears never stops the pain.
This I have learned.