All it takes is a beautiful fake smile to hide an injured soul and they will never notice how broken you really are. Robin Williams

It is not easy being strong when I’m feeling dead inside. I smile, talk, laugh and people think that I am doing well, that I am on the mend, ready to leave the past behind and move forward and maybe jump in with both feet into a new relationship. But appearances are deceiving. Like you never know what is happening behind closed doors, you never know what is really happening behind a smile.

During my relationship, I became adept at hiding my true feelings from my partner, my friends, my colleagues and myself. If people asked me how I was, I would smile and answer:  “I am fine, but enough about me. What about you?” Then people would start talking about themselves and I was happy that I had managed to deflect their attention onto something else and that I did not have to reveal that I was actually unhappy, sad and depressed. Some people did sometimes notice that I had lost the sparkle in my eyes and would try to press me to reply honestly, but I would just brush their query away and change the subject.

Few people were privy to my real state of mind and they were those who I thought would not judge or lecture me on my relationship. I did not want to hear what I was trying to shield myself from:  that I was in a highly toxic relationship. I was burying my head in the sand, pretending that I was not aware of the dysfunctional things that were happening between me and my partner. This is why I started isolating myself from most people. I did not want to socialise anymore so as to not answer questions.

He became my only source of company and comfort. I would wait at home for him to finish work, like a faithful dog. I just wanted him to be home, so the pain and anxiety would disappear. This irritated him more and more and we started falling into the abyss.  The more I wanted him to be home, the less he was there. The more time he spent with other people, the more distressed I was getting but I was unable to identify the cause of this horrendous pain that was taking over my mind. We began by arguing once a week, then every day, then several times a day, until I could not take it anymore and I exploded into a ranting tirade that lead to our final break up.

Every now and then, I still lie to myself. I am trying to alleviate the pain by revisiting the past, trying to find some answers, reopening the wounds that had started to heal and are now bleeding profusely and will start to fester soon if I do not attend to them as soon as possible.  Maybe I cannot mend what was broken beyond repair and I know that if I do not address certain issues immediately, they will come back at me, causing more devastation than the first time round.

But I keep on  smiling so nobody knows what I’m really feeling inside and it is said that we don’t just smile because we’re happy,  smiling makes us happy. So it’s worth smiling.  🙂 😉