PROMPT
Smiling Downwards
When it all falls down
The sweet little old lady in my building ripped my mask off the other day.
Not that mask, not the Rona one, the one I wear to mask my pain. She saw right through me.
She said, “You’re very beautiful, but you smile downwards.”
Hi, I’m Nada, and I am really good at appearing like the apple in the mirror — or I thought I was.
Sometimes you need to appear whole to survive, but I am quickly learning that you can’t keep up the facade for too long — you can hide it, mask it, deceive the outside world, but what happens when it all falls down?
When it starts to show physically?
I ran home, holding my tears back, and googled “smiling downwards” Is it a real thing? And there it was.
We now know that smiling is indeed instinctive, but not just when we’re happy. The ‘miserable smile’ is a stoical grin-and-bear-it expression — a slight, asymmetric smile with an expression of deep sadness pasted over the top. BBC.com
Fuck. My cover is blown.
In One Sentence: The downturned smile signals high stress, unhappiness, anger, displeasure, grief, sadness and other negative thoughts such as disapproval.
It’s been over two years of me appearing OK, downing my feelings, and pushing through. But my mask stopped working all of a sudden. I didn’t have time to sulk. I had to keep going to survive.
I suppose you can press auto-drive and function on zombie mode for so long. But we are not zombies. We are humans.
To feel or not to feel?
If you asked me to submit to this prompt last year, I would have said, fuck feelings!!!! And I still stand by that. I had to do it.
But this year, I’m starting to sing a different tune.
Sometimes ignoring your feelings is crucial to your existence. And sometimes, suppressing them starts to take shape somewhere else, like in your smile, or the way you carry your shoulders, or the quality of food you start to consume.
I agree with Lucy Dan 蛋小姐 (she/her/她) that you have to find the balance.
It is important to cultivate inner clarity — I’m not there yet, but one day I hope to be the apple in the picture — The real apple- but to be brave enough to turn around and face the mirror. Bruises and all.
Maybe one day I’ll write the tale. The one the scares me. The one that makes me feel uncertain and so uncomfortable. Someone dared me to do it.
To submit to this prompt, check out The Brain is a Noodle at the link over here.
To Feel or Not To Feel?
What are your thoughts about this post? It says:
True: It’s important to feel your feelings.
Also true: It’s okay to not feel all your feelings all the time
“Write the tale that scares you, that makes you feel uncertain, that isn’t comfortable. I dare you.” Writer and actor Michaela Coel.