When I lay down that evening, countless memories passed through my mind. Beyond my control, the roots of my eyelashes began to ache, as if pricked by tiny needles. Then, from both eyes, my tears burst forth—as though something that had been accumulating inside me for years was finally being released. My throat tightened, my nose felt blocked. With every drop that fell, something within me loosened a little more.
That day, I had gone to Burgruine Landsee. Rising among forests, the stones of this castle felt like a memory defying time. I was not alone—Elif, Markus, and Seda were with me. Elif was a history teacher. As we entered the castle, she touched the stones and said:
“Every stone is a memory. These walls hold centuries of fear and courage.”
Markus, an Austrian philosopher, quietly added right after:
“Time is not merely a flow. It lives within what we forget. This castle reminds us of the selves we have forgotten.”
Seda was a doctor. As she looked around with gentle yet profound attention, she said:
“The body is like history. Every emotion leaves a trace. Tears are the soul’s treatment.”
A moment of silence fell. The wind slipped through the cracks in the castle walls, echoing the voice of the past among the stones. In that moment, I realized that we were not only walking through a castle—we were touching the remnants within ourselves.
That night, I lay in bed. That strange ache at the roots of my eyelashes was still there. Seda’s voice echoed in my mind: “Tears are a purification.” Perhaps history, philosophy, and medicine were all saying the same thing after all: the deepest healing of a human being begins with remembering oneself.
When morning came, the air was cool. I bent toward the soil. I planted large yellow and white chrysanthemums. The earth was damp; at my fingertips was the coolness of the past. With each flower I placed, it felt as though I was burying a memory and planting a hope in its place. Elif’s history, Markus’s thought, Seda’s wisdom—all came together to point me toward one truth: healing was not about rejecting the past, but about making peace with it.
The chrysanthemums grew in the garden—the yellow ones reminding me of the sun, the white ones of the moon. The soil had absorbed my tears and returned to me a colorful silence. The stones of Burgruine Landsee were still there, but now I had blended into their quiet. I learned that time does not heal—understanding does. And now I know: even a single tear, if shed with awareness, becomes history. And every history, one day, blooms.
