..crying..

Crying. I hate crying. I was once advised against it. Crying is for the weak, cliche as it may sound. My parents reprove crying. One explanation is that when a person cries, it shows desperation. It shows hopelessness. I was warned to quit parading my emotions about certain conditions, especially if it were a negative emotion.

As a child, I learned to conceal my negative emotions from people. Hard as it may seem, I push back my tears to my ducts whenever I am on the verge of crying. And then, as I grew older, it became easier.

Just don't let me be alone in my room, that's where it all happens. Sometimes I wonder, if my room's walls could talk, it would talk for hours on end. Because, if you look inside my closet, hidden behind my hanged clothes, push them to one side and you'll see a scoreboard.

That's right. A scoreboard. To anyone, it wouldn't mean anything. But to me the scoreboard means a lot - the number of times I cried in that year. I keep track, what can I say. I keep track of the days and of how many times I cried in a single day. Every year, I count them. Big cries, little cries. Cries of a lonely girl. Cries of an aching girl. They were all tallied.

And until now, I keep track. But I stopped updating the scoreboard inside my closet. I keep them somewhere else now. Somewhere more private.

And yes, I still look and act cool, calm and collected but there would be and there are days when I am pushing back my tears again for reasons only I would know.

Crying is for the weak, cliche as it may sound. Maybe I am