I was sitting down, staring into nothingness, my mind as still as a void. No thoughts, no words, just silence. And then, tears started flowing. Strange. No thoughts—and yet, they trickled down, unbidden. I wiped them away, the skin around my eyes tender, raw from days of this same motion. Swiping away what feels like the evidence of some inner failure. And then I wonder—why do tears exist? Why does sadness choose to manifest in this way, spilling from my eyes as though it cannot be contained within? Why must it breach the surface, so visible, so public? Swollen eyes, streaked cheeks, the crumpling of tissue after tissue. Because to me, sadness isn’t something others can see. It isn’t external. It isn’t droplets or damp skin. It lives deeper, at the very core of my being, where no light reaches.

Sadness feels like dying by a thousand invisible cuts, wounds that bleed inward, unseen and unspoken. But some days, it isn’t a thousand cuts—it’s one great, brute crushing force, a battering ram against the every fibre of my being on 18th January. These fractures don’t leave scars anyone can touch. When I walk past others, they don’t see them. But I feel them. I carry them.

Sadness is breathlessness—those stolen, uneven inhales when I’m trying to hold it all together. Sadness is the cruel repetition of coping and crumbling, coping and crumbling, until I wonder if the cycle will ever end. So why tears? Why this raw and unbidden outpouring? Why this betrayal of something I want to hide?

Why must sadness demand to be seen? Why can’t it stay in the shadows where it belongs?