Eyes.

It’s true what they say: the eyes are the doors to one’s soul. When you first meet someone, everyone’s the same. Their eyes are guarded, the doors are locked. There is some depth, some emotion, some sentivity in them. But they’re the minimum level of humanity and compassion we all are required to have, to show. In other words it’s a mask.

I love searching in someone’s eyes. They tell a far better story, a far believable truth then what the mouth does. I’ve seen so many — eyes as deep as the ocean and universe, so full of infinite compassion and light; eyes so empty and cold, almost hatred trying to burst out of their pupils; eyes that reflect, walls so high up, layers and layers that can’t quite unravel. In which category one’s eyes fall under, says a lot about oneself.

I’ve had one pair of eyes that used to look at me so warmly, so full of shine, so pure, that it was too good to be true. No way anyone was willing to give without getting a return. It‘s masked, I concluded. The same pair of eyes, as quickly as they glitter, looked at me with so much disgust and anger, rage and hostility. They once used to feel so safe and secure, a nest I fly to in seek of comfort. Now, even though the emptiness has been filled with the initial light as if it never left, the same pair of eyes are just a fragile piece of glass with a crack, a reminder always of what it became once.

How do I make this pair of eyes my safe haven again? How do I erase the awful nightmare it once brought? How do I forget how they once saw me as? How do I get over how it made me feel, how it changed me?

I’ve had one pair of eyes look at me with pure intrigue and interest, a dash of compassion and care. My eyes, at that time, were like broken glass and an open, torn up book in the pits of emptiness and darkness, shielded with my mastered barrier walls. These pair of eyes saw through that layers and layers of shield, ripping each and every last one of them, leaving me bare and vulnerable. These eyes saw me for who I was, for what I am and what I have become — broken and bruised, lifeless and meaningless — and saw all of that as beautiful. These eyes were warm and passionate, aggressive but gentle. These eyes lingered till there wasn’t even an atom left of this soul before claiming that they meant no harm. Because then these eyes once looked at me like how everyone else did: a broken unfixable human being — and that broke me even more. These eyes, who was the only one to see the good in me, now does not.

How do I process what the change mean, how it reflects about me? How do I hold on to just a little bit longer of what used to be? How do I bring back the warm and passionate eyes once again? How do I forget these eyes ever saw me the same as everyone else?

One’s eyes are the most powerful yet fragile thing a human has. They’re the most secret weapon. They’re deadly. They’re venomous. They’re toxic. I’ve been hurt by words, by knives, by action, but out of all of them, the truth in the eyes doesn’t just hurt me. It kills me.