Vulnerability, repressed

I can’t say exactly when I lost the emotional maturity in childhood to cry it out.

But what I can say with some degree of certainty is that when the briney waters did return decades later, I was so broken that the tears soaked through every sandbag; burst the moat’s wall and even lapped up over the flood defences of very last resort; the ones they said would never fail, despite my crude patching abilities.

Inconsolable sobbing washed every last negative thought away, leaving me wet and naked in mind with a certain kind of shocked serenity; a clarity of tectonic and articulate sound and vision.

The sheer exhaustion of not being able to greystone any longer; layers of skin peeled off, almost to the bone, exposing my tiny, tender and pink inner child blinking in the light.

Or perhaps I am a geyser. Sometimes I feel a low rumbling pressure building for months before I blow, nature reclaiming me; taking it all out of my hands when I fail to honour myself with a permission to feel.

The humbling strength of pain, hurt and grief feels good in this twisted world. Crying still only happening once a year, still a sign of vast improvement in the dry cracked ruins of my flood plain.

Vulnerability repressed always catches up in the end, there’s nothing you can do.

Do not be afraid, if the tears whisper that they’re coming – know they come with good intentions to liberate your soul.