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.