The unappreciated beauty of a strong person

It’s true what they say. ‘We don’t know our own strength’. Partly because, like everything human, strength is relative. And partly because we need to be stretched beyond our limits to know our limits. But mostly because strength is merely a coincidence. An accident waiting to happen.

Strength is an appendage that we are born with. Something that keeps coming up in conversations. A cross that we were asked to bear, at an age when being burdened felt heroic. So, taking it off now, after all these years, feels like a sin. A sin the world isn’t decent enough to let us commit.

Strength is almost always an assumption. Someone tells someone else that you are a strong person, and suddenly you lose the right to be weak. Like with most things in life, if it happens enough times, you’ll start believing that it’s true.

People come to you with pain and leave it with you, never once asking, ‘what are you doing with it after I’m done?’ You are all shoulders, always busy letting others rest. No one ever seems to notice or care that you have a head too.

The world too uses glorious words to describe them, but it rarely ever treats them well. I know strength feels like the least you can give to the people that love you, but. if they love you, they’ll love your failings/fallings as well. They’ll have to.