Cry Me a River

He had always hated her tears. Not disliked, not been uncomfortable with, but hated. Partly because he had never known how to deal with her crying, partly because seeing her cry was almost an eerie sight; her tears were silent and steady and her act of crying composed - her eyes merely welled up and then the tears started falling, ran down on her face like rivers run towards the sea. And then she would just sit there, crying calmly, and her eyes would get red and puffy and K absolutely hated that. And maybe he had hated her tears also because they came often, way too often for any standard there were for tears coming from the eyes of an adult; whenever they argued, no matter how small the matter at hand was, or whenever she was sad for whatever reason - and she often was - she always cried. And every time she did K hated her tears even more, sometimes up to the point that he momentarily hated her as well.

There were times when he felt she cried just because she knew K hated it; but most of the time, it seemed, it was just because she was the type. Sometimes he asked her to stop crying, told her how it agitated him it and how it made him even more angry (in the case her tears were due to them arguing) but that had very little effect. She said crying was a form of expressing an emotion just like shouting or name calling or ridiculing, and maybe it was poor behaviour but she didn't do it on purpose and couldn't just snap out of it. K didn't have a way to respond to that, because she was right when saying so and he himself certainly had unfortunate ways of delivering his point every now and then. But just like two wrongs don't make a right this perfectly valid point did very little to lessen his resentment towards her tears; if anything, their justification only annoyed him more.

His profound hate towards her tears was then as well-founded as was her tendency to shed them. Considering that it took him surprisingly long a time to realize that she cried less. It was during a conversation about some relatively irrelevant topic that the thought suddenly occurred to him; she hadn't cried in weeks even if there had been situations where she usually would have done so. The other week they had argued about something mundane, and two days ago he had snapped at her for leaving her shoes in the hallway which had caused K to almost fell on his face when he had come home in the dark hours. This sudden realization was enough of a revelation for K to stop talking mid-sentence; and when she asked what was the matter, he brought up the subject of her crying - or the recent lack of it.

She looked at him with a somewhat peculiar expression on her face; later on K realized that the flicker he had seen on her face but hadn't been able to name had been one of the first signs of what was coming. "I cry less? Shouldn't that make you happy, then?" Her tone was dry. She was more than aware of his resentment towards this particular bodily fluid of hers.

K shrugged his shoulders, trying to keep his approach nonchalant. "Doesn't it make you happy? I mean crying is not exactly nice, is it." For anyone, he thought to himself.

The line of her mouth tightened; but even a careful inspection showed no signs of tears forming. "I guess so." 

K sighed. "I just meant that it's nice that you are more in control of your emotions."

"Or maybe there is just less emotion." Her voice was equally void of the said emotion.

K nodded. "That's exactly what I meant."

She looked at him for a few seconds and then turned back to the dishes she was doing. "Yes, I guess you're right."

K stared at her back for a while, a bit unsure of the outcome of the exchange they had just had; but as she seemed calm he figured they had came into an agreement.

During the next months the trend of less crying continued and if anything, got even more prevalent. For some reason they fought more but she cried less and less, until the nastiest of arguments couldn't make her shed a single tear. K was more than OK with this; he found it easier not having to have to deal with her visible emotions, and even if they clashed a bit too often for his liking, he reasoned with himself that it was partly because now he was able to clear the air more profoundly when not silenced by the anger brought about by her reaction, and that eventually this would lead into a more even relationship.

And it happened exactly like that. As more time passed their fights became fewer in number; and K was very satisfied with this. And yet at the same time he felt there was an undertone, something he couldn't quite put his finger on. She seemed distant, a bit detached, and if they argued, she had less fight in her than she used to. She gave up an argument before it developed into a fight and seldom came up with any opinions of her own any more; a person who had always been very particular about getting their point through suddenly seemed almost completely uninterested whether her side was heard or not. More often than not she just shrugged her shoulders and let things pass, agreed with him or just stayed silent.

It was then when K realized that as much as he hated her tears - still did even if they hadn't surfaced in quite a while now - it was the lack of them that was amiss. He looked at her as she was sitting on her computer, concentrating on whatever she was currently working on with an expression of enthusiasm K hadn't seen in ages, and suddenly realized what she had meant when she had said that there was less emotion. She hadn't meant what he had thought; that there was less emotion to surface as tears because she was better in control of herself. What she had meant, and K understood it now, was that there was less emotion because there was less emotion, simple as that; it no longer made her sad enough to cry if they had an argument.

There was less emotion because she no longer cared; K had became a person who no longer had the power to make her cry. And suddenly her tears were what he needed to see the most, he missed them more than he had ever hated them; now that she finally was how he had thought he had wanted her to be, she no longer was someone who was in love with him.

They moved apart two months later, three days before their five year anniversary; and even then, she didn't cry.