See.

Eyes. Blue eyes, green eyes, grey eyes, hazel eyes, violet eyes, brown eyes; they tell a story. When you look into them, you see something. Maybe you’ll see happiness, or sadness, or grief- or depression, or joy, or euphoria. Some eyes, you’ll look into and you can’t see anything. But … if you look deeper, you’ll see a story. It’s like their eyes are holding secrets that are waiting to spill out and yet their reserved with an army around them blocking out each and every intruder.

But her eyes, I simply can’t read. But there’s something there, I know there is. I just can’t figure out what. Her steel grey orbs that are framed with waist-length obsidian black hair and olive skin have what seems to be a cover of protection preventing anyone from reading into her. I can’t fathom how she can do it though. She never speaks… not to anyone. Not teachers, not students, not anyone. I don’t understand how she can keep so much of her emotions locked away. She keeps it immured in that chest that’s supposedly a heart:  her happiness, her pride, her passion, her pain.

*****

Today, she’s sitting in the back of the classroom. She didn’t sit next to anyone, and no one sits next to her. I contemplated sitting back there with her, but then I realized that she probably wants to be alone, but why does she want to be alone?

            She always takes notes. Her black ballpoint pen is always on the college-lined paper. Always. She doesn’t look at anyone. She looks at the board, listens to the teacher, and blocks out everyone around her. The question isn’t if she has walls up anymore, it’s why she has walls up.

*****

So I smiled at her in the hallway today. Her response? She stared down at her black Vans, turned the opposite direction and walked away. Epic. Fail.

Everyday it’s the same - the same action, the same response, the same result. Frankly, I’ve realized that it doesn’t necessarily aggravate or anger me because she’s being kind of rude, it infuriates me that she is this way. I’ve solved that part. She’s numb. Numb from the pain? Numb from the grief? Numb from the anger? Why is she numb?

*****

 I think I’ve made progress. I think she’s realized that I’m not harmful…or a stalker. I’m sorry, I know that I seem like a pedophile, but I’m curious and worried and so utterly intrigued. Back to the point though, every time I smile or wave or say hi now, she looks up and she doesn’t turn and avoid me! Yes, I know, it doesn’t seem like much, but at least it’s something.

*****

She talked. She spoke. She voiced a word. One word, two letters, one vowel, one consonant, one syllable.

Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. She said hi back! At first, I thought I was just dreaming, or that I was a schizophrenic when I heard her melodic, soft, yet quiet voice. But then I realized I wasn’t by the way she gave me a look that asked if I needed a strait-jacket. I still couldn’t read her eyes, but she dropped her guard. For that split second, I broke through the stone-cold barriers around her eyes, her heart, her mind, her.

*****

 Let me paint you a picture. I’m walking through the blood red-painted hallways lined with grimy blue lockers today during study hall to the bathroom and all of a sudden I’m forcefully yanked into a closet. Cliché? Most certainly. The small hand was bone-chilling and had a steel-like grip.

            At first, darkness surrounded me. Then I realized who it was. It was her. It had to be, who else could it be? The hand pulled the long white string that substituted as a light switch. I was right.

It was her. I knew it was the moment I met her grey-eyed glare. Her glare was so intense, beautiful and yet frightening that I didn’t even register the fact that I wasn’t in a closet and that I was in the faculty lounge. She asked why I was obsessed with her, why I always stared at her…and if she had a reason to call the cops.

            I told her that I was innocuous. Absolutely harmless.  And then I explained everything. How and why she intrigued me; that I was curious; that I thought she was numb….

            Her response? She asked why. She asked me why the hell I could possibly care about someone like her. I said why not? Why not care for a beautiful girl that is so incredulously guarded and numb. She said that no one had ever cared; she thought that no one ever would. But clearly she hadn’t met me. She said that her parents ran their own business and left her to her own devices. They never took her to meet other family or anyone. They never took her out of the house and she had no friends starkly because she pushed them away every time. They just sort of gave up on her. How? I have no idea. She went on to tell me that her parents had died when she was seven years old. They left her everything, but she couldn’t be in possession of it until she turned 18. An adult.

She proceeded to tell me that she lived with her foster parents; except they just drank and drank and drank. When they were done, they threw the empty liquor/beer/wine/rum bottles at her. They hit her, beat her, punched her, kicked her.

But at the end of all this it wasn’t her story that astounded me. It was the fact that her voice never cracked or wavered. Her partially guarded grey orbs were completely dry. She never had a single tear in her eye. Not one.

            That was the moment. The epiphany. The realization. She always had an emotion in her cold, dark, hard, steel-like grey orbs.  I just never saw it. It was strength. Toughness. Resilience.

*****

You see, you never know who someone is or what someone does or how someone feels. Not until you open up your eyes and see what their story is. Don’t give up on anyone. Don’t make assumptions about anyone until you open up your eyes and look into someone else’s.Whether their blue, green, grey, violet, or brown eyes. They’re eyes. They hold a story. So open up your eyes and read it.