Hiding Behind a Smiley Face Mask

This is me.  Will the people who loved the smiley face on the right still love the person on the left?

The other night, I was watching TV and a commercial came on for some kind of antidepressant medication.  The woman who was the main character of the commercial walked around with a hand-drawn smiley face mask that she'd put up over her regular face...

Usually I don't pay much attention to ads on TV, but this one kind of got me.

It felt like someone was following me around and making a commercial of how I've been going through my life for years.  I plaster that damn smile on my face and just go, even if I don't feel like it.  I throw the smile in my voice on the phone, even if I've been bawling myself hoarse moments before I picked the phone up. 

I don't think I'm quite like the woman in the commercial.  I know why I'm not buoyant like a helium balloon on a string most of the time (I have my moments of buoyancy, though.  I have flashes of true happiness.  I can feel them.)  It's easier to plaster the smile on my face or straighten my shoulders and put a little sparkle in my voice than it is to answer "what's wrong?"

I've realized that I don't actually fool everyone as much as I wish I did.  I have one particular friend who can tell if I'm faking a smile even if we're talking on the phone.  And they let me know they can tell the difference, every time I do it.  The first time we had the conversation about my slipping into the Rainbow Brite Sprinkle version of me, I was unsettled, and I saw it as a bit of an invasion.  How dare they?!  But it got me asking myself why it's so important to me that people only see or hear the smile. 

Well, you know, I have a reputation.  I'm told I'm high-energy, and I am... most of the time.  I'm told I'm sunny, and I can be.  A walking glitter-bomb (who can sling an f-bomb better than you can, Dearie).  It took me so many years to accept that people actually DO love that version of me, the perky, sunny, happy-happy-happy proto-Poppy-the-Troll because for a very long time, I was convinced that I was tolerated in this world, at the very best.

I only just recently accepted that people might like or love me, so why would I want to go effing it all up by letting people see the hurricane of hurt swirling in my eyes?  Are people still going to love me even if they know I cry in the shower, in the Jeep when I'm alone, that I curl up in a ball and bawl while my daughter is off at school, that the reason I resist taking off my dark glasses, even when it's not really appropriate to be wearing dark glasses is that I've probably smudged my waterproof eye makeup because...tears?

Will the people who loved me when they thought I was Tigger still love me when they realize that I'm more Eeyore than they ever knew?  I mean really?

The thing is, I understand that I wasn't giving anybody a chance to love the real me.  Just my smiley representative.  It wasn't fair to people or to me.  People have a right to know who their friend is.  I have a right to have the kind of friends who can see through the fake smile even if they aren't even in the same ZIP code, but who love me anyway and who will just sit with me in the dark when I can't find the light-switch.  Because even Sparkly Me would do the same for them.  And I hope I have proven this.

And I'm working on Why I'm So Sad.  I talk to a therapist online, and she's helped me understand that while I do hurt my own feelings, I do have an avalanche of legitimate reasons for walking around with so much pain.  Me.  This is not an altar-call for mental health, but I feel like I wouldn't be very genuine if I slopped this all over the table and let you think I can handle it all on my own.  I tried for years to, and it's too much.  So I got help.  I have zero shame in talking about this.  I do not think this makes me weak at all.  If I had an earache, I'd visit my physician.  If I blew out my knee, I'd see an orthopaedist.  Why would anybody try to DIY something as complex and mysterious as the human psyche?  Why would I try to DIY my own mental health anymore? 

Anyway, Friends, I'm not Tigger to the bone.  I'm more like Eeyore with Tigger skin. I haven't changed.  I've just gotten so tired of the projection.  I'm working on bringing the Smiley Face and My Face into closer alignment.  I do better like the sparkly, high-energy version of Me far better than this blue-blob-feeling incarnation.  Maybe there's somewhere in the middle we can meet.  I don't know.

I've worried that this will be the jumpin' off point for some of my people.  The going has gotten tough and is going to stay that way for a while.  But I have enough faith in humanity and enough faith in my friends to believe that I will still have friends who stick with me, and love me even through the messy and the unpleasant and the difficult to love.

Just.  Be kind to the people you meet, Friends, when we go back to being able to meet people again.  You never know who's just holding themselves together with silly putty and duct tape and popsicle sticks.  It's probably those you'd suspect the least.  I have a feeling there's a lot more of us right now, with the way things are.  Hold on, keep on, and just love.  Please.