Weakness

It's personal. It's real. It's me.

What does one do when the foundation they stand upon crumbles? Surely you would falter. What type of person are you? Are you the one that cries and drowns in all that unsure water? Are you the one that goes down brave, braced, stoic faced? Perhaps, instead, you are the one that clings to all that’s left with all your self?
 

I know what I am; I am the one that crinkles the papers, the slick photo paper, in their fists and tries their hardest not to cry. Crying is a weakness now, not as it was before. When I was younger, crying was a way to let things out. It was not a crime and still yet, it is not; it is Weakness. How can my mother look upon her mother's face and not cry, and yet I am reduced to tears everytime? I squeeze her hand and imagine that I am transfering a little of myself to her; a little of my strength. But in the end—it was not so. (How can I give what I do not have?) I am a thief. I stole from her. What did I steal, you may ask? Perhaps not, but dear soul, I will confide.
 

I stole her life, in one quick squeeze. I gripped her hand and she worried so, biting her lip as she looked up at my tearful face. She said, “Don’t cry, I’ll be alright.” And how was I to know that she would lie? She was my foundation; my Angel; my savior, my Saint... my Grandmother. How do you live when that chunk's been ripped away? Should you even try? Do you walk around, dripping, bleeding, from your side? Can you survive with a wound like that? It doesn't seem practical.
 

How can they expect you to live when something like that has happened? I look at the people around me who have had this happen... There was a cheerleader once, who lived with her Grandma Mimi. Mimi died and the girl denied it. From what I heard, it took a very long time for it to hit her. I suppose she was shocked and the bleeding didn't get to her until she finally took the time to look down and see it pooling at her feet...
 

There's a boy in one of my classes whose father died. He died of a heart attack. No warning whatsoever. The boy missed school for a few days, and then he came back. He just came back. Why didn't he disappear? Given the choice, I would have fell off the surface of the Earth and never come back. How do you face things like that? Is it not terrifying to look in the mirror and see it gone? Is it not horrifying to feel that a piece of your soul has been severed from you? 
 

She has promised me her jewelry, her tea set, and her hand written recipes. And God, I hope I never have to take them. The moment they are transferred to my hands, I will have to accept the truth and I'm not sure I can. I can't live with a wound like that, I'm almost positive. It hurts me so just to watch her struggle the way she does. But maybe I can suffer through-- maybe. Perhaps I will not fall apart? And even if I can't...
 

Dame Eve Walton once said, “When a woman says she isn’t going to go on it doesn’t mean she isn’t going to go on.”

And by God, I hope she was right.