The Smile That Stayed
Last night, I felt.
I sobbed like an infant, and I’m grateful for the experience. Is it possible to enjoy your own suffering?
I’ve been slipping. Further into the void, where executive functioning replaces feeling. Where everything gets pushed down, locked away in the furthest depths of my mind, or what’s left of my heart. To keep me safe. To keep me alive.
A few months ago, I tried to feel anything. The absence of emotion had started to weigh heavily on me, an irony, really, considering how every self-help book begs you to embrace your emotions. But the one I needed to retrieve wasn’t joy or love. It was sadness. Sorrow. So I went looking.
I stared into the mirror. Stared at the hollow man staring back. I begged my body: Show me. Show me I haven’t lost the part of me that makes me human. That it hadn’t been consumed by the void.
And yet, nothing. Not a droplet to soak my cheek. No lump in my throat. No quiver of the lips. Just the dull ache of reaching out in the dark, hands outstretched, trying to find a light switch that might not exist.
He smiled back.
“Why... Why are you smiling? How are you smiling? What could you possibly have to smile about?”
And then it hit me, like a truck.
He doesn’t. I don’t. But this is all I know. It’s all I can give.
Because if I drop this smile, the one that protects me, keeps the curious at a distance, convinces the concerned I’m fine, I’m not sure it will ever come back.
And yet, last night, I sobbed. Like an infant.
Late into the night, I went searching for him again. Not for the first time. I’ve tried before, but I always hold back. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t even remember me. So why should I care?
Honestly, it’s frightening how much the internet offers. If you’re reading this, Google your name and place of birth. You’ll be surprised.
I searched. A mobile number. An email. Anything.
My thoughts spun, as they always do, weaving a scene I’ve rehearsed a thousand times. A quiet fantasy of me, finally confronting him. Not to scream, but to make him feel it. Every splinter of what he left behind. Every echo of what he broke. And though I hate admitting it, some part of me is sure he’s done it to others, too.
Despite feeling like my own private investigator, he’s still an enigma. No social media. Barely a trace at the workplaces I know he’s been. (Less creepy than it sounds. Small town.)
A flicker of satisfaction, his face wasn’t among the company leadership photos. Still in the same job after a decade. I guess an inability to grow is something we have in common.
But the satisfaction didn’t last.
I found a video. Six years old. Still long after his disappearance. I hesitated. Hovered over the play button. It was a workplace promotional video. His back to the camera, but I knew it was him. I pressed play.
His face. Time had passed, but it was still him. Weathered now. Sad, almost. The wrinkles around his eyes pulled slightly when he smiled. Hair more grey than black, unsurprising for his age. And for a moment, I didn’t recognise him.
That face didn’t match the vindictive monster from my dreams. Not the one who haunts me and pulls rage from the depths. The one I rehearse my pain on, over and over, each imagined confrontation sharpening my tongue, training me for a battle that will never come.
And then he fucking smiled.
That same familiar, deliberate smile. The one I knew. Charming. Knowing. It twitched at the corner of his mouth like it always had. And it should have screamed arrogance. But somehow, impossibly, it carried warmth.
I used to want that smile aimed at me.
I used to need it, like proof I hadn’t been erased.
Every confrontation I’ve imagined is just a cry for that smile. That impossible warmth. The proof that I still mattered to him, once. Sharing some half-baked, bullshit wisdom like he always did. (Which, fuck you for this, I still remember and use to this day.)
That smile reached so deep into the void, it pulled out feelings I was convinced the man in the mirror had killed.
Relief rushed through my body.
Pain. Longing. The hunger for closure.
It all surged like a flood.
The numbness shattered. The emotions that had been edging me for a decade finally released, like a kettle’s cry on the stove, too long silenced, now desperate to be heard.
I dropped to my knees, face buried in the rug. One final, harrowing moan of sorrow escaped me, and then, just as quickly, it was over.
The pain.
The sadness.
The betrayal.
Gone. A fleeting moment.
And then the voice returned. Calm. Collected. Detached.
“That’s enough. That’s all you get,” it said.
And just like that, my smile returned.
The smile that keeps the concerned at arm's length.
How long will I endure before the kettle cries out again?
Only time will tell.
I sat back down like nothing had happened.