My eyes drop to the bowl of lettuce in front of me as I listen to my friends. I keep my head down, shoveling in forkfuls of food, nodding away mouthfuls of restrained words. I was hoping the conversation wouldn’t turn this way but it always does. Guys, relationships, sex—no matter where our dinner dates begin, we always end up here. I want to care just as much as I want to taste the dressing and quinoa between my teeth, but my senses are slipping away. Surrounded by friends in a crowded restaurant, I am alone. I eat fast, craving the space on my plate, the space in my bed, the space to escape these yearning, bleeding, seeking hearts and curl up warm within my own. I am not like my friends. I am not looking for someone because I have already found the one. I am in love with myself.

A hand grabs my empty dish and takes it away. I look up to find cocked heads and sensitive eyes. My friends are aware, but they don’t see me. They see walls. They see a cage. They see a hurt creature, cowering in the corner. I open my mouth to defend, realizing the quick dry words are what they expect. Under the pressure and heat, I reach for my glass, sipping away the difference, the distance, the sympathy stewing in the room. The ice water coats my throat and cools its way down into my widening chest. I can feel the powerful muscle pumping inside. The slanted gazes straighten and align as my friends sit up. Their pity seeps back into the floor. They watch as my mouth opens again, tongue ready this time, fully saturated with the rarely-spoken words:

“I actually enjoy being alone. I’m not interested in dating anybody.”

Their brows furrow, ruffled by the rogue wave rippling across the table. I wait, hopeful for a response, hopeful for a change in the conversational direction and a way out of this trench, but too soon the waitress returns and sets down our main meals. My friends cut the meat and stuff the severed protein in, chewing fast, heads down, curtains of hair shielding their eyes. I pick up my fork and do the same, listening as the familiar words trickle out into the air. I murmur in agreement, pretending to be like them—pretending to have nothing to lose.

       Before I went off to college, my mom gave me some advice: “Smile,” she said. “Be nice to everyone you meet and you’ll have no problem making friends.” Desperate to make up for my lack of friends in high school, I took her advice too literally and walked around campus for the first few months with a constant smile on my face—not a full smile because even I knew that would be ridiculous to maintain, but a vague, remembering-something-funny smile: the sort of expression I hoped might portray the openness my mom was referring to without crossing over the line to lunacy.

      

By my sophomore year, after many failed attempts at meeting other students on campus and in class, I decided to get a job at a nearby coffee shop, purely for the social benefits. I knew the people who worked there were mostly college students, and as coworkers, they would have no choice but to talk to me. I basically applied to be a part of their friend group, and luckily my social scheme worked. I immediately became close with two girls, in particular the taller, sarcastic one named Harley. She and I had a lot in common, from binge-eating problems to anti-social tendencies, but my absolute favorite quality of hers was her honesty. She could say anything to anyone and get away with it, because her observations were always spot-on and hilarious, until of course the day she turned around and started observing me:

        “Hey, did you know you walk by my class every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon?”

        I shook my head.

        “Yeah, and you always have a weird smile on your face like you’re thinking of a joke. It’s really strange.”

        Really strange. After a year and a half of upholding what I thought was a friendly demeanor, all I had managed to do was come across as really strange. I went home that night and promised myself to never again let my mom’s advice make me look like a fool.

        A couple years after I graduated college and moved back home with my parents, I decided to go for a walk by myself. I kept my gaze toward the ground and my expression serious—a look I knew well from high school and decided to reinstate after Harley’s comment from college. People weren’t drawn to me when I put out this negative sort of energy, but at least they weren’t invited to make fun at me either. Being closed off seemed like the better option of the two, that is until I walked by a neighbor who noticed my flat appearance and felt inspired to say:

        “Smile! It gets better.”

        When I looked up, he had a big grin on his face, as if he was trying to visually teach me how to a smile. His intentions I know were good, but in the moment, his words felt cruel. I was twenty-one years old, lonely, depressed, and unbelievably insecure. The last thing I wanted was some stranger telling me to smile, when I could hardly think of a reason to fake one myself.

        I walked away feeling more confused about myself than I had before. What did people want from me? I starting thinking about all the opposing things people had ever said about my appearance. I thought about Harley and my mom, but there were so many more instances: the bartender who asked why I was so happy in my license picture, that friend who told me I giggle too much, my high school teacher who said I never smile. Well which one was it? Smile too much or too little? I tried to think back to a time when people didn’t make these sort of comments, or better yet, a time when I didn’t hear them. Was I ever so securely me that I didn’t pay attention to others’ criticism? The answer was too far away for me to reach.

      A few months later, deep in the trenches of depression, I stopped caring what people thought of me. My insecurities just sort of drifted away one night during a blizzard as I fell into a pill-induced sleep, too weak from the muscle relaxers to make any conscious facial expression at all. At age twenty-one, suicide began to feel like my answer.

      The next morning, I was rushed to the emergency room, and several days later, transferred to the psychiatric ward. When the nurses first walked me through the door to where the other patients were waiting to meet me, my first instinct under the heat of all those eyes was to put on a fake smile. Happiness was the last emotion I was feeling, but still in the face of strangers, I reverted back to my mom's advice. As the nurses disappeared and left me standing there smiling like a terrified idiot, a large, forty-something-year-old man emerged from the crowd and stepped in front of me.

       "Let me guess: you probably took some pills, thinking you were being cool and rebellious, is that it?"

       Immediately, my nervous smile drained from my face, and as it did, I watched his reaction change.

       "I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to offend you."

       By this point, I was so broken down, so rejected by every facet of my life that I could no longer hide how I was feeling. The wall covering my true emotions had been torn down, and now for once in my life, I didn't care if strangers could see. That first day in the psych ward was my first day as an adult where I actually looked the way I was feeling. 

       Now, four years later, after coming out of depression and moving into my own home, I feel I have finally gained that self-confidence that I have always desperately yearned for. In the past, I was so concentrated on appearing the way everyone else wanted me to appear that I never stopped to consider the far more important stuff underneath: my true feelings. Almost immediately after coming out of the hospital, I started making real changes in my life. I found a job and moved to the town I'd always dreamed of living in. I let go of the damaging people in my life and worked hard on the relationships I cared about. I worked hard to establish a positive voice inside my head to push the negative one out. I built a business focused on being outside and around animals, because I knew a job like that would make me happy. Everything I did was ultimately for my happiness--a way to find my true smile--because as I've learned a smile really can attract a friend or start a better life. It's the phony ones that don't work right.