No one is ever ready to leave. No one is ever ready to lose. No one is ever ready to feel that pain. I feel the ones that hurt the most though, is when they lose someone without actually losing them. Say you have a neglective parent. Physically, they’re there. Mentally, they’re not. Physically, they never left, mentally, they were never there. That’s a loss that can’t be understood by just a story told by the mouth but a story that is told with the tears in your eyes when you realize you weren’t good enough for them to stay. It’s a story that you can’t see by just watching how that parent ignores you but also feeling the pain of knowing you weren’t never good enough for them. There was a kid one time, who had a neglective and abusive father. He mainly abused her mother, and neglected her and her brother too. The little girl spent her years taking care of her brother and her parents. She took care of her mother because she was sick. She took care of her father because he blamed her for his pain. It’s odd how she believed that it was her fault that he bled on her when he was the one who cut the wound in her heart. She came into the world to a mother who only wished she could care and a father who only wished she was never born. She did anything to make him proud. She’d clean the whole house, she’d wake up her brother for school, make food, get good grades, help get food for the house, do everything her mother couldn’t and everything her father wouldn’t. She got so desperate for his love that she took an eraser to her kindergarten school work and erased the coloring outside the lines just to hear “I’m proud of you.” Even then she never heard it. Then, she lost her mom. What was worse is her mom never died, but she wasn’t there. She was physically there, but she mentally was no where to be found. That broke her. That girl felt and endless amount of loss. She felt so much loss she didn’t know what it meant to belong. She didn’t know what it was like to have. She didn’t know what it was like to have so she made sure she gave her all. She made sure no one else had to feel the loss of losing someone who’s not really gone. Years go by and she still to this day does that. She refuses to let anyone, especially any child, feel the pain of losing someone who’s standing right in front of you. That pain hurts more than any death ever could. It hurts to the point you rather they were dead than losing them mentally. I know how that hurts. I know how that hurts because I was that girl. I am that girl. I have healed, but the scars stay with me. At least I know I’ll never lose my scars like I lost my mother and my so called father.

I hear with my eyes more than my ears. When I look at someone, it’s like there soul spills out through their eyes, and their life story is displayed in the mixture of colors that pigments the iris. I always found it weird how I can hear through the mere sight of someone’s movements or the shakiness in their breathe. I found it weird how I could tell someone’s mood by just looking at their face and not the words, but the tone of their voice. I never thought much of it, and when I did, I pushed it down where no one could find it. It made me feel different, unique, but not in a good way. It made me feel like I didn’t belong, so I locked it up within the boundaries of my mind. One day, one odd day, it escaped. I looked at a girl, and saw her eyes filled with tears, threatening to spill. Her nose was twitching, leg was bouncing, shaking back and forth. Oddly enough I decided to walk over to her. I don’t know why, but I did. “Are you okay?” She looked at me and it’s as if that question alone broke the flood gates that was holding her tears back broke. I sat down next to her, not knowing what to do. I never interfered when I thought someone was upset, I never asked if they were okay expecting them to actually admit defeat. I thought to myself and how my mother would hold me tight until my tears dried in the fabric of her shirt, and I asked, “Do you need a hug?” When she looks at me this time, her eyes filled with tears, but also with longing. With a longing of love and affection she so desperately needed. I hugged her. I hugged her, and I didn’t let go until she was ready. I didn’t realize how much I helped her until I saw her again, crumpling up letter after letter and throwing them out. I never knew what they were for, but they held a weight that she was relieved to let go of. She crumpled them all up, all but one. That one letter was different. It felt safe, kind, loving. She handed it to me. When I opened it, all it read was “Thank you. You saved me when I thought no one could.” The thing that people point out most about me now is how I can read their emotions like the back of my hand without them saying a word. They say it’s a “gift.” Yeah, where I’m from, it is indeed unique for someone to be capable to do such thing, but not a bad unique. A unique that helped people when they wouldn’t or couldn’t speak out for themselves. A unique that turned tears into a story simply by watching them fall from another’s cheek. It was a gift I had that saved that girls life. If I never let my gift shine, she wouldn’t be here. She wouldn’t be in a job she loves, with two great kids and a loving spouse. She reminds me every day how lucky she was to have fallen apon this gift of mine, and she tells her kids about it too. She tells them how their father can read stories without the presence of words, and how he was the reason that they had the loving mother and father they needed. The loving mother and father my wife didn’t have. My gift may not be something out of this world, but it kept the ones I loved most in it, and that’s all that matters.

As the tide reaches the sand Washing up treasures on the land But as the tide comes to play We watch our footprints wash away The memory of our fun Washed into the sea But our story just begun The tale of you and me.

Whe watched our footprints wash away But the sand sticks throughout the day Between our toes Now in our shoes Behind our ears In our hair too Our memories has left from the beach The Remaining stuck to you and me.

As our time reaches the end I lay with you Hand in hand It’s time to go Sadly so soon But we’ll meet again And with the tide too.