Over the last few months, I’ve been told that I smile a lot. I smile after skiing down a run, while mixing drinks in my Boston shaker, when I speak to customers during my barista shift. Often, people will say, “you should smile like her,” or “her vivacious personality is such a great fit for this fun café.” Most of the time, I smile subconsciously because something genuinely excites me. But lately, my smile has been my game face—it’s a poker face of sorts; as long as I maintain my high-energy baseline demeanor, nobody can really read the dark thoughts running through my head.
When I wasn’t depressed, being vivacious wasn’t exhausting—it felt like it was a true expression of how I felt inside. But with depression, it’s like my brain is the old, depleted battery in my iPhone. Even when I plug in the phone to recharge, it fades in and out—like me rolling around, tossing and turning in my sleep. Any charge the phone can hold runs out quickly. The more exuberant I am at work or in front of my friends, the lower the dark dip that comes after.
So my goal over the next few weeks is to drop the game face. I don’t need to be sunny and bright all the time. I’m allowed to have bad days. Everyone has bad days, and I shouldn’t have to plaster a huge grin on my face all the time so people can’t read my mind. An advisor who meant a lot to me at school once told me that it’s ok to not be ok sometimes.
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