Piercey's Tilt & Tumbl

A friend of mine recently inspired me to write. I love to write, but the question always became “what do I write about?” I could write fiction, I could write non-fiction, I could write a poem. A song. A story. When the time came around to sit down and actually write, I was at a loss for words. Maybe I’m not so creative after all, I would think. The question was no longer “what do I write about,” but rather “what is wrong with you?” Frustration took over. I’m sure you’ve been there before. I’m not talking about writer’s block or artist’s block, but something completely different. What I’m talking about is the moment where your inspiration is shot down, that disgusting little moment when you feel worthless, incapable, and saddened. It lasts longer for some than it does for others. Some can live their whole lives with a fake smile on their face.The fake smiles… They kill me. Why would such beautiful people need to falsify their emotions? There are people in the world who are true about their emotions, and then there’s people like myself. So what I’m going to write about now is one of the hardest things to write about in existence. It’s non-fiction as well as fiction. It’s a serenade for someone that I love.

I’m going to write about myself. More specifically, the part of me that didn’t know what it was doing. This is the part of me that was my consciousness 3 years ago. 

I said earlier that people love to falsify their emotions. They live their life smiling for other people. This is not a beautiful smile. This is the smile of people who are tired of themselves. Tired of their life. You’ve seen it before, I’m sure. There are people who are always smiling and it makes you wonder… Just what are they smiling about? Three years ago, when I was a horrible emotional wreck, this is how I felt. “I need to smile for other people! If I look sad all the time, nobody will want to talk to me!” The fake smiles didn’t stop. My problems were just so insignificant compared to the troubles that other people were facing, so why was I so upset over everything?

I’m going to talk about my experience as one of these people who put on the fake smiles. I had it all! I had parents who loved me, I had a girlfriend that I was very fond of, and I had friends who loved me. This didn’t matter to me. I fake smiled myself into sickness. Here, have an equation:

Fake smiles + being unsure = sickness.

This is both a literal sickness and the much, much worse sickness of emotional sickness. I was sick with myself. I sucked at everything, I was getting bad marks in school, nobody really expressed an interest in hanging out with me or even having anything to do with me, my friends all felt fake. I could tell my parents loved me but admitting these sorts of things to family is the hardest thing to do, because they do everything in their power to make you happy. I just couldn’t stand to tell them “no, I am not happy with myself.” They work so hard for me, how could I? I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t want to face it. So I hid behind a mask of smiling. Nobody could know that something was wrong with me. 

Thoughts clouded my mind. “I don’t need friends. I don’t need my girlfriend. I especially don’t need help from anybody because my problems are nothing. I should be happy, but I’m not. So what I am is just stupid. I’m a very fortunate person to have what I have, so being sad is stupid.” These were the thoughts that hid behind my smile. Every time I thought to myself I felt pathetic for being sad, so I masked it. I spent an entire summer mostly alone. I didn’t want to go out and pretend to be happy with friends. I broke up with my girlfriend. I didn’t have the courage to do it myself even though I told myself that I would if it should come to that. I felt pathetic. I didn’t even know why I was depressed, I just was. It was this uncertainty that escalated my depression. A vicious paradox of being unsure of why I’m depressed and escalating my depression as a result. Life was terrible despite all the good things that I had and I could not tell you why.

“Are you okay?”
“No. No, I’m not.”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know.”

This is how a conversation went regarding my problems. I didn’t know what was wrong. For two years I wondered to myself almost every day: “What’s wrong with me?” The answer was always “I don’t know.” It was frustrating. Even now when I type this I can sense people thinking “Wow, get some real problems.” These are people that escalated my depressed thoughts. Severity of problems were the issue, and mine seemed so trivial in comparison to those people who had been through other things. Sexual assault. Physical abuse. The deaths of close family members. These are people who had reasons to be upset. Then there was me and my “I don’t know.” And my fake smile. I could not enjoy myself no matter what I was doing. What I had was depression, for sure. I wouldn’t see a doctor about it though. This was something I wanted to understand, not just for it to go away with some pills.

“You’re stupid.”
“You’re worthless.”
“You’re ugly.” 

I still don’t understand it, of course. Depression isn’t something we can define, it’s something that needs to be felt. I cried, of course. All the time. But never in front of people. I had to keep smiling. Smiling for other people.

Fast forward an amount of time. Specifically, to the last two years or so. I woke up one day and made a choice to myself. I said, “do I walk around today smiling for other people? Do I enjoy doing this selfless task?” I realized that faking my emotions for other people was in fact a disgusting, selfish task. I was a fake person. I did not want to be a fake person.

At that moment it finally occurred to me. I don’t know what triggered it. I literally felt like a new person that day. New thoughts floated through my head. For the first time in a long, long time, I had made myself smile for real. I decided that today I am not going to fake my smile. I’m going to smile for real. It took all the willpower in the world to do it. I said “Hey! Fuck you, day! I’m going to kick your ass!” I say that to myself every day when I get out of bed. Not out loud, but in my head. Because my physical self doesn’t need that, my psychological self needs it. It felt like I truly discovered myself, not through some life changing event or something inspiring. What I did was I made the conscious decision that I didn’t like the way I thought. I realized that paradox I mentioned earlier. The paradox of being unsure and depressed. I realized that what I was fighting was an addiction. I had an addiction to fake smiling and being someone I am not.

I made the most powerful decision I’ve ever made in my life. I decided that I didn’t want to feel that way anymore. Not a day has gone by where I haven’t said that same phrase to myself and made the conscious decision to be a happy person. I decided that I’m not going to smile for other people. I decided that I didn’t even care if other people liked me or not. I decided that today and from now on I’m just going to be me. Me. Not the fake smile me, but the real smile me. People now say to me at school…

“Why are you always smiling? How can you be so happy all the time?”
“I wish I could be happy all the time like you.”

I’ve made the decision that I want to be a happy person. That’s really all there is to it. I tell myself to enjoy the moment, and I do. I love people. I love this planet. Chances are, I love you. In order to do those things I discovered that I needed to love myself first. That’s what it really boils down to, isn’t it? Those two dreadful years of my life were made better by making a conscious decision to myself. I decided that fake smiling wasn’t doing anybody any good, but really smiling was at the very least doing MYSELF some good.

It feels like I’m just repeating myself over and over again. I could talk about this all day, but I’m really dragging on here. So do something for yourself today. Not because I’m telling you to, but because you should. Be happy. Love life, love people, love the world, but most importantly…

Love yourself.