There’s an infinite amount of things in this world that I’ll never understand; an enormous list of things I’ll never know the rhyme or reason behind, if there is one. I can never understand why there are days when out of the blue, watching TV downstairs, that she’ll just get up and leave the room, making an exit to our bedroom, and our bed. I’ll never understand why her brain has less chemicals than mine, why she suffers from depression, and I’m just fine.

But as I watch her crawl up the stairs slowly, I know that the tears have already began to well up in her eyes and are threatening to spill over but she’s keeping her composure as long as she can until she’s hidden away inside our room. And thirty seconds later, she’ll have unleashed the flood of salty liquid down her cheeks until they mark the pillow case with mascara and eyeliner.

And after letting her sob in a silence that she thinks I cannot hear, I’ll make my way up the stairs to find her with her back towards the door, her shoulders shaking as she tries to stop the rain from falling, hoping I’ll leave it alone and leave the room.

But it’s too much to see her fight this battle on her own. It’s too hard to see the scars she’s taken in a haste to finish the war for the night and start again unexpectedly in the future. So instead, I don’t ask her what’s wrong or why she’s crying because I know that she doesn’t even know why the tears are falling so quickly. I know that she’s just as lost as I am in this mission.

So I won’t leave the room, but I’ll lay down beside her and listen to her as she continues trying to stop her tears, the sniffling of her nose before she knows she can’t win and let’s herself go once more in the presence of me. And before long, I’ll wrap my arms around her shoulders and hold her in them until she relaxes in my security.

There are things in this world that I’ll never understand, like how she can be so miserable and I can be just fine; why she was born with a brain with less chemicals than mine.