A.N.: A very short little piece of writing I wrote a while ago but just got around to typing today...enjoy, read, and review!
Disclaimer: I'm J.K. Rowling. I'm j/k.
Tears. Water and salt. Meaningless substance. Salt water means nothing except for in chemistry when it means H20 with NaCl and at the beach where it means a bad taste. But it has no deep meaning, means nothing big or emotional, does it?
So if this is true, how can it mean so much?
I guess it's like a mirror. Alone, mirrors are merely pieces of glass. But as a mirror, it can be so much more. So much more...so much more.
A mirror, that's it. Tears are mirrors, each set up just a little differently, in a little different way. Each shows a separate scene in our lives, or set of scenes, or expression. Each tear shows a different scene reflected in our minds, in our hearts, in our souls.
This first tear is full and plump.
I see their faces as though a collage inside it, a collage of pain and hate and blank and ugly and awful and strange. Each victims of those cruel games which life plays on us, those cruel games we never chose to play. Damnit that makes me mad to see those sad faces in this pitiful tear. Their sadness, their anger, their pain-filled faces haunt me, remnants of what could be, phantoms and yet so strangely, so awfully real. The reflection...all in a mere one tear...the thoughts that come from the small thing...such grandiloquence and yet such terror out of this.
The next tear is flat and almost not there at all.
But the reflection is there. There all too much. It, like the tear, is a thin, pitiful reflection, a thing that is thin and can almost hide but is still felt and we still see. It is again faces. Faces of those who should be kind, happy, or at least charitable and good when they see me but are not. They pretend but are not. They sneer, thinking I'm blind, thinking I have blind innocence by which I can't see their ugly superiority.
But I can see it. I know.
The next tear splatters down, almost loud, and so obvious, and so ugly, a thing I try to turn away from but cannot.
This one is so much more obvious, yet in the same way ugly as the last. This little mirror reflects the ones who don't care that I know anything they do, anything they say, anything they think, anything they believe about me. They don't take the time to make a pretense of kindness. The couldn't care less if I see, they don't care less that I do. Damn I hate them. Acting so much better because...well, just because. They push me, sneer openly, look at me with undisguised hatred and disgust.
I wish the mirror would show me a hallucination of me getting back, them shrinking. But it won't. That's the worst part of mirrors: they show the truth.
Now this one is thin but drawn out everywhere and making my face all wet and ugly and cruel.
In it I see the expressions of exasperation. Looking at me as they wonder why I can't fit their little mold of perfection. Why I can't just change this and just change that about me so that somehow they'd be satisfied, happy again. "Why can't he do it so that I can be happy?" they wonder. This is in their eyes and in my tear drops as well.
One final tear rides slowly down by wet and pitiful face. I don't know what this one looks like but the reflection tells enough.
I see my life. Every event, every little thing. A pity, isn't it? All my life is really just a tear drop. Not a happy laugh. Not a masterpiece of literature or of art or of philosophy or of leadership or of research. Not a big mixture of everything -- laughs, tears, boredom, things I'm proud of, and everything. Just a little drop of water mixed with salt -- that's my life summed up.
These tears I shed are my sadness.
These tears I shed are my loneliness.
These tears I shed are my discouragement.
These tears I shed are my bad luck.
These tears I shed are my life.
These tears I shed are me.
They are me, Neville Longbottom.