I am a living contradiction. The truest description of me is this. I am a stoic who cries.

I can bear the heaviest hours without splitting. I can draw the finest lines and write the most painful, precise words without flinching. I govern my emotions, my reactions, my silence. I can take the hands of the weak and steady them with my own, until they feel strength where there was none. I can enter mental wars that would have broken others, wars that strip faith from the bones, and come out still standing. I can face a crowd, speak boldly, give them words they love, without a tremor betraying me. I endure life. I endure the misfortune that might have turned a good man bitter. I resist. I persist.

And yet, I cry.

I cry over small things I cannot explain. Sometimes I cry without a reason I can name, as if the feeling has not learned its language yet. I feel deeply, perhaps too deeply, and I learned to sheath that depth in strength. I learned to call it control. I learned to call it power.

For a long time I asked myself which one I was. Fragile or strong. Weak or unbreakable.

The truth arrived quietly. It is both.

I am not less for the tears. I am not undone by them. I am a stoic who cries.