“If this applies to you, I want you to cross the line.” She says, very simply.
One line. It’s just a single piece of blue masking tape running across the gym floor--an array of people on either side. I could never cross, and the only person who would know is me. I could keep every word I’ve never said left unsaid. I could stand right where I am and never move, never change. I could stay here and be satisfied with never seeing the gym, the world, from across the line. What’s so special about standing over there anyway? The gym looks the same from either side, right?
I  join the pitter-patter of sneakers on the gym floor: walking in time to the music. The dreary heaving of the air conditioner amplifies the scent of rubber and high school boys that hangs in the air, the white ‘Challenge Day’ posters on the walls a stark contrast to the dull gray of the gym walls.
There’s nothing special about this blue line, so why am I so worked up about it?
Breathe.
There are seven lights running vertically across the ceiling.
Inhale.
Only one set of three.
Exhale.
Five lights across.
Breathe.
What can I say? I am only a crosser, one of seven billion. I am one of many, one of the crowd. Another face in the mix.
But when it happens, when the hands go up, I am not prepared. A mass of teachers and students alike, all raising their hands. Of all colors, ages, genders with their hands in a silent salute, as one. All saying ‘I love you’ in silence, with their hands alone.
Feelings are funny. They have a strange way of creeping up on you when you expect them least. Clawing up your throat against all odds, spilling shamelessly onto your face. Like being underwater all your life, finally coming up for a breath of air. Saying everything in the space of nothing until black and white meld into grey. Grey, neither one color nor the other, yet every color at once. 
It’s uncontrollable, irrational, and illogical. It’s irreversible, unnatural, and foreign for me to lose my self-control, surrounded by total strangers. In everyone else’s eyes I’m the strong one, the responsible one, the one who has everything figured out. I’m not supposed to break, to fall, to stop my strides--but here I am. A minimal crack in my armor has amounted to a catastrophic shattering.
We stand in one line, parallel to the ones on the floor in unspoken agreement. We stand behind, beside, and amongst one another like sunflowers in a field, turned towards the light. Nobody speaks, and the assorted sounds of the room become insignificant.
I’m tempted to fill the silence, to follow my first instinct. Stuff the gaps with meaningless words so I won’t have to face the things that matter. Welcome distractions into my life with open arms.
But for the first time I let the silence be. There are no thoughts in my head, no unspoken words fluttering on my tongue. I’m not running away. I’m no longer tiptoeing along the edge of the abyss.
Suddenly we are all crossing, again and again. Suddenly we are not just anyone anymore. We are not just faces in seven billion. We are people who feel things. We are here, stronger than before, facing the things that scare us most, no longer trying to stifle the silence. I inhale deeply, and let the the silence spill the truth.