The Art of The Smile

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I was six years old when I first felt the crippling sadness

That I would later go on to characterise as the early symptoms of my depression.

I used to laugh when others laughed,

But no sooner had the laughter began, it would fade,

Faster than the bright spark of a fire cracker

Vanishing in the New Year’s Sky.

My lips would morph back into a thin straight line,

And people would ask me why?

“It was funny, just not that funny.”

Was my short curt reply,

But honestly, I had no Idea why.

Why my laughter couldn’t bounce through the echo chambers of my hollow heart

And fill me with joy.

I never understood why the feeling of happiness eluded me.

It would be nine years before I learnt how to smile.

See, I had grown weary of my mother’s constant drone,

“You should smile more!” she would say

Tired of teachers breathing down my neck,

Tired of friends not caring,

Tired of the endless river of tears I was trying to choke back,

Tired of not being okay because apparently its not okay to not be okay.

So, at the age of 15,

After God knows how many emotional breakdowns,

In a last stitch attempt to get them to leave me alone,

I taught myself how to smile.

A smile born not of joy,

But of emotional suppression.

Understand that in the mechanics of a ‘genuine’ smile,

Its not so much the quality of happiness,

Rather the absence of negative emotion,

That makes a smile passable.

So, I scrubbed my face with sand paper,

Erasing the thick salt lines left in the wake of my tears,

Raised the corners of my lips so high

They could have touched the sky,

Stitched it all into place

My ever-genuine smile.

I shoved my pain down my throat

Each time it rose up to undo the façade

Clawing its way out

It left lacerations on vocal cords

Quieting the vocal folds

Until my cried were nothing more than deafening silence

My tears a ghost glimmering in the past

And I bathed in their praise

“You look so good when you smile,

Just look at that handsome face.”

  

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