The Smiling Facade

On a recent trip to France someone told me I should just "try being happy."

In France I did something completely out of character�"I opened up. We were traveling around the country via charter bus, forced into close quarters, breathing in the warm air of our neighbors, our bags toppled over one another's, food wrappers pressing up against the shores of our seats, feet dangling and mingling in the center aisle. United under the summer camp bonding feel, our normal boundaries did not exist. As we shared our food and territory with one another, we shared our innermost thoughts.

In France I let myself out. I wasn't likely to ever see these people at home; what did I care what they knew of me? My walls ceased to exist, and soon they came to know how deeply unhappy I'd been for the last few years of my life�"how it all started with a boy and how it quickly escalated into a full blown s**t-storm, sparing no sphere of my life from its wrath. On that bus they came to know how unbelievably cliché my life was: that I'd been ruined by a boy and then s**t hit the fan.

“Why don't you just try being happy? If you just tell yourself that you're happy things will seem so much better,” said he sitting behind me. Taken aback by his suggestion, I didn't say much. I dismissed it upon the claim that “it's not that simple,” because it wasn't. He knew the gist of my demons�"he had never faced them himself. Maybe he thought it was that simple because the original source of my issues was just a boy and I was sounding like a frivolous little girl, so faintly mourning over the part of me that died along with a relationship, but he didn't know the part of me that died. He didn't know what can of worms had been opened in my life, nor did he know how desperately I'd been trying to extinguish them. But maybe I should just try being happy.

If only it were that easy. I could try to be happy, but forcing happy on one's self isn't happy at all. Happiness comes and goes in waves, and forcing the sensation is sickening. It's an overbearing taste, eventually solidifying into a burden. Look happy, sound happy, be happy�"it becomes an act. The true feeling of happiness is ruined by making it into an appearance to be preserved.

If I tell myself that I'm happy, things will not get better. I'll be lying to myself. I might manage to convince myself that the sensation is real�"until reality comes crushing back down on me. It won't make my problems go away; it'll bury them, exactly what I've been trying to stop doing for so long. That's why I've started going out on limbs and opening up to people. I couldn't take the burden anymore; I couldn't take the breakdowns that came every couple months. For the most part, opening up was going well. I was seeing improvement in my overall quality of life, but progress is a delicate thing. Hearing that I just needed to “try being happy,” though it was what he genuinely thought was going to help me, helped nothing. I wasn't ready to be happy, and I'm still not.

When I open up to someone about something deeply wrong with my life, it’s because I trust them. I don’t want advice; I don’t want instructions. I don’t want to be told to be happy because the complexities of human emotion and consciousness cannot be boiled down to a simple choice in outlook. The atmosphere around me will influence my thought and demeanor, and ultimately influence who I am at the moment. Part of me never left that bus, injured by the fact that when I took a chance, my problems were dismissed, unworthy of being acknowledged as something serious. Even such a petty original issue deserves recognition, as it can eventually snowball into something like me.

Author's Note

Any input is greatly appreciated.