Laced with brilliant smiles and shining eyes

I was looking through my journal—as I do every few weeks—when I noticed this piece, which has clear parallels with my previous blog post (Boys don't cry, but they really should). I think it's interesting to see how I tackled much the same issue from a more immediately personal viewpoint.

The quoted text at the start is from The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most by Dashboard Confessional. I tend to use music—especially song lyrics—to help me understand the world. It conveys emotion so succinctly—so powerfully—that a song or a band, or even single chorus or verse, can change your life. But that's a topic for another day...

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Buried deep as you can dig inside yourself
And covered with a perfect shell
Such a charming, beautiful exterior
Laced with brilliant smiles and shining eyes
Perfect posture, but you're barely scraping by
But you're barely scraping by

In this society, we teach people—young men and boys especially—to hide their feelings; we learn to "grin and bear it," no matter the difficulty. It's not fair to push your problems onto others. In many cases, we learn to not deal with a problem at all—rather, we bury it, ignore it, and pretend everything is alright.

They say that if you smile everything will be okay—like the song: "Smile though your heart is aching / Smile even though it's breaking / … / Smile, what's the use of crying? / You'll find that life is still worthwhile / If you just smile."

I actually love this song; I just think its sentiment is a little misguided.

But that's blatantly false. You're never as lonely as when you smile to hide the sadness. No-one likes a sad face, though, so we hide the pain, the fear, the sorrow, because, if we don't, we fear falling deeper. I think we all smile and lie about ourselves sometimes, but many of the saddest people appear to be among the happiest.

I like to think that I have two warring people inside of me. One is genuinely happy; he loves life, and sees beauty in everything. He is my unwavering optimism, the light in my eyes, and the reason I stand straight. The other is not pessimistic, nor fatalistic, nor cynical. But he is desperately lonely and sad. He used to be angry, too, but now he's just disappointed that so few people in this world strive to make it a better place—or even seem to care that it could be better.

The spark in my personality comes from these conflicting selves; my creativity is fuelled by this internal struggle.

More than just providing a spark, this war within myself pushes me to grow—to become the best possible version of myself. If any one inner self wins, I fear that I will lose. If my experiences stop changing the way I think, see, live, and love, there'll be no point to living. Life is a journey. A journey without change—without some kind of progression—is no journey at all.

I think I'm learning to stop hiding the loneliness or sadness that strikes—often without warning—from time to time. I still struggle to let myself be vulnerable or to let people in to my world. I was never really one to smile to hide the sadness, or fear, or pain. But I still kept my darkest moments to myself. Perhaps I used them as inspiration in my creative endeavours. But I seldom actually showed anyone—either the feelings themselves or the work they pushed me to create. That's changing now...slowly.