There is a learned strength within our family, one that may be hard to understand for those without. A teardrop doesn’t count unless it has fallen, if practiced will can keep it balanced on fragile lashes till it dries. There is a need sometimes to hide the true emotion; I’ve never liked raw honesty untempered by compassion. If hurting hurts someone else instead, even in a sympathetic escalation of events, the chain is broken by sheer will of shears of steel.
But if the tear cannot be held back, or hidden within an unrelated moment, it is also understood that it is then free to fall, to be dried by love as strong as that which tried to hold it in.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology