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As an infant, you cried nonstop.
This isn’t something you remember. That’s for the better. The doctors said it was colic, but how is it really possible for them to have known there was nothing wrong? How could you have told them if you were too busy screaming until your throat became swollen, too small and scared to even sit up on your own, let alone say what needed to be said? You must have been in such excruciating pain, spending every torturous moment wishing to be removed from the body you never asked for, even in your very first months. Why would you want to remember that?
Your mother remembered, though. That’s how you knew you were such a horrible baby. It was her go-to talking point during arguments, that raising you has been an impossible task from the very start, that she sacrificed sleepless nights and hospital funds and every last strand of her sanity just to keep you here. That’s why you’re an only child; she had always wanted a large family, but after the hell you put her through, she couldn’t bear the thought of doing it again. You didn’t ask to be put in this body, and yet, it’s your fault. Why can’t you remember that?
The last time you remember crying, you were seven years old. It was a sunny afternoon in late July, and you were in the backyard, bouncing your tattered tennis ball against the shed wall. One throw got away from you, leaving your wrist with just a little too much power, soaring over your head on the way back, landing roughly in the oak tree above you. And then, from branches too high for you to see, something fell. You could only get a good look at it for long enough to see that it was brown, and covered in countless little holes, before you were swarmed. Your vision overtaken with black and yellow, your senses overwhelmed with piercing, throbbing pain, how could you do anything but cry?
Your father disagreed, though. He kept his disdain to himself while you were rushed away from the hive, while dozens of stingers were removed from every inch of your skin, but the longer your hysterics continued, the more his patience waned. He wouldn’t accept that you couldn’t sit for dinner hours later without sniveling and wiping your eyes. He told you the world is a harsh place, and no self-respecting man would let a little pain make him so weak. He told you he would give you something to cry about if you didn’t stop being such a wuss. His voice was so calm, and yet his tone was so threatening, that your eyes dried up and your hiccups slowed on their own. How could you do anything but listen?
From that day on, anytime you felt the familiar urge to burst into tears, they stayed hidden beneath your eyes. The pain, the humiliation, it wasn’t worth it. As you got older, as the world tried harder and harder to push you to your limit, you pledged that you wouldn’t let it win. That you would never again reduce yourself to such a pathetic low for as long as you lived.
You kept your word for fifteen long years. In truth, you never broke it. Whatever you are now, trapped in the abscesses of your own mind, you are not alive. As far as you’re aware, Leeroy didn’t shed another tear for as long as he lived. But whatever you are — dead, gone, abstracted, Jax — you aren’t beholden to his empty promises, nor him to your failures.
So you can cry all you want, in the arms of someone you were never supposed to see again, who was never supposed to come looking for you after she saw all the wrong you had done. You can scream through your blubbering, with the pain of knowing you’re still wanted when you can’t go back, howling like the baby boy who never asked to be born the way he was. You can let your tears stream down your cheeks, a feeling so unfamiliar to you now, as is the tight grip of arms around you and the gentle cushioning of warm fabric against your chin. It ignites a burning sensation within your body, something that threatens to consume what little of you remains and plunge you into this searing pain forever. It hurts so much, it makes you feel so worthless, and yet, there’s a part of you that’s never felt more at ease. To know you are heard, you are seen at your lowest, and yet the arms around you only tighten. Where you would expect to hear laughter or insults, there are only sobs that mirror your own. It feels so wrong that you can’t even question it anymore, your own desperation has left you too weak.
You want nothing more than for her to stay forever, to let you cry until you’ve run out of water in your nonexistent body, until all the pain has been replaced with this twisted serenity and you can figure out what it means together. You don’t get that far before she’s yanked away, arm outstretched towards you the whole time, because you are still wanted in spite of your weakness and your wrongdoings. You know it wasn’t long enough for either of you, but you would have hurt her by keeping her here, just like you hurt everyone else.
Maybe, if you could change things, you would have cried more. You would have stuck around to find out if things have changed since you were seven years old. But that doesn’t matter anymore. All that matters is that she’s gone now, and you’re alone again, reborn as something new and devoid of meaning. You are alone with your tears, alone with your failures, alone with the knowledge that you would still be wanted, but you can’t go back.
You bury your face in your hands and continue to wail. You hope she’ll come back someday, but you know that if she doesn’t, it’s your fault.