Painted Smiles

The story below is an excerpt from a personal essay that I wrote in high school....

In a moment of desperation, I pushed the black “on” button on my cell phone and seven notes echoed through the dark field. Choking back tears I whispered a forced greeting, “Hey are you busy?”

Minutes later, his silhouette hurried toward me. Ashamed of a tear-stained face my head remained dropped, eyes fixed on my own dirt-stained sneakers. A soft grip enclosed each of my wrists. With a gentle tug and a whispered command, I fell into his arms and wet his chest with my tears.

Another disastrous night had thrust me down into a whirlwind of anger, helplessness, and desperation.  Yesterday, the sun had risen and set upon my staged perfection, a skill that my family and culture had taught me to master so well. Just like nearly every other day, I had been the center of attention with my laughter and jokes in our high school cafeteria. In the way that 16 year-old girls do, I rushed the halls whenever a new friend entered the building and nearly tackled them to the ground in an embrace that seemed to represent years of separation. More than anything, I wanted to be normal. I wanted that learned carefree attitude to be real.

But that moment on the football bleachers, when I stood in the arms of the first young man I presumed to love, revealed months of bottled-up disappointment. It was one of a handful of instances when I had taken off the painted smile, and poured out the truth about all that was going on in my life.

As he held me in his arms, I felt human. My concerns had been validated; he had listened and tried so hard to understand. However, perhaps the most defining discovery in all of this was that while I found this intimacy to be relieving and humanizing- I preferred the painted smile. 

It pains me to admit that more than six years have passed since I wrote this, and I have only further mastered what is termed as “the painted smile.” An allusion to a poem written by a dear friend, “The Painted Smile” described a clown parading through a circus, making people laugh. In the poem the author questions if the clown is ever sad, and is envious of his painted smile and his effortless ability to hide his pain from others.

When I fist read this as a little girl, I too was envious of the clown. I thought my life would be easier if nobody ever knew all that pained me, maybe I could just imagine it all away and make people laugh enough that they didn’t see through it..
I was right. When I live my life as if my problems don’t exist, I have more fun, I have more “friends”, and being social is easy. I am able to ignore the things that hurt me for long periods of time.

It has only been in the past year that I have realized what I miss by continuously choosing to pretend that I am not affected by difficult things. The trials I am met with in life are each opportunities for growth and increased understanding. My ability to connect with myself and others is ever easier as I am open and honest about life in its beauty AND its struggles.

It is OKAY, even healthy to admit that I am having a hard time and that I feel pain. It is okay to need and ask for help. For in all of it, there are lessons to be learned, and there are people ready and willing to stand by us as we work through it.

I am often still envious of “the painted smile” and find it tempting to avoid honesty when my loved ones ask how I am doing.  But I try to remember that when I am honest and willing to reach out to others in my times of need - I build on relationships and connect with people in a way that I otherwise could not. My relationship with God deepens and my understanding of his plan and profound love for each of his children increases.

God himself taught us to mourn with those that mourn, and comfort those who stand in need of comfort...It is OKAY to be the one in need of comfort, and it is even okay to mourn. Others are meant to stand beside us and help us through it. Having that need is never something to be ashamed of.  It should be natural to admit that I am affected by my human experience, and it is silly for me to pretend that I'm not.

We should never be ashamed of our pain, and we should never pretend it isn't there. It can be a powerful teacher and motivator if we recognize it’s place in our lives and confront it rather than wishing it away.

Life is about overcoming trials, strengthening ourselves, and reaching out to others as they strive to do the same. As we work through things, rather than avoiding them, we are given unique insight into understanding ourselves, others and world around us.  Every moment we live changes us in some way, we can honor our experiences by accepting how they affected us, learning from it, and moving forward; not by pretending that it never changed us.