The Patched Together Smile

Trying to hide the damage from this has been the most precarious dance of my life. In the journey back to being normal, presentable, okay, I’ve left behind everyone who doesn’t understand that my life isn’t. I weed them out, the ones who ask how I am and need to hear that I am well from the ones who really want the answer. The ones who can handle the real answer, I keep, and the rest fall away.

At first, I resented them, the ones who could never get it. Then I remembered my friend Sarah whose brother committed suicide before she left home for college. I remember her drawings, huge panels of her face between drawings of jumper cables on either side. I recall the expression of her portrait and how deeply sad it was. Still, I didn’t say I’m sorry, still I didn’t hug her, still I didn’t break the ice. I was one of them too. I had always wondered why the two of us didn’t become better friends in college. She couldn’t let me in because I couldn’t take the pain she was in. I couldn’t hold it, I couldn’t get my arms around it.

Now I know that breaking the ice isn’t easy. Who knows what lurks beneath it. It could be anything. The unpredictability is unnerving. It’s like taming a wild mare. It’s safer not to get too close.

It’s easier now for me to be more aerodynamic and glide through life with a patched up, taped on smile. No one knows what’s behind it. At the grocery store, at the dentist’s office, at the airport, I glide through. I smile. I crack jokes. No one really knows.

It all works really well until I sit in front of computer in the morning and hit facebook after I drive my little one to school. And there it is. Oliver’s best friends’ senior picture. And the next post a picture of a bunch of his friends back in kindergarten. And I want to punch the screen. The carefully constructed facade comes crashing open and there she is again. The one who can’t hide the damage because that would hide him. It was his first day of senior year, too. Do you know how handsome he would have been? Would you like to see his kindergarten photo? You might, but I’ll never show you. The patched together smile works too well.