The Pain of a Smile

He stood there, water cascading down his face. Was it from the shower head or was it from his blood-shot eyes? As he heard the water droplets hit the floor, he is reminded of the undesirable curves that the water trickles down. A body which would be perfect, for a female. His much to large chest is a reminder of the sin of gluttony he is so guilty of. His arms are large but not in muscle but fat. The mountain on his lower torso which only grows in layers as he advances in age. The hair which grows everywhere is as dark as the thoughts he has when he tries to imagine his own image as “beautiful”. Worse still, he is constantly reminded of his scars inside by the scars on his face. Not a smooth surface but one torn from all the pain he’s been through throughout his short life.

Some may say that he’s not half bad but he can’t accept that. He was born with the mindset of wanting nothing but perfection. Some say that he already has everything but when he looks in the mirror everything he has crumbles because he can’t get past the fact that he is, ugly. The sound of water droplets hitting the walls of the shower stop as he turns the tap off. Silence ensues. The silence reminds him of his loneliness, the loneliness he chose to embrace after being betrayed by everyone he loved the most. People see him as the boy surrounded by many, loved by everyone, hated for fun and jokes yet he can never truly call someone his true friend. His secrets all pent up because deep inside he knows that no one will understand him. No one can.

He ponders about what his life could have been like had he not taken the knife people used against him to dig deeper into his wounds because essentially that is what he had done. He deserves every ounce of pain he feels now because he did it to himself. He let his parents torture him into believing he was worth nothing, he let his friends see him as a circus freak, only there for their amusement, nothing more. He let himself be consumed by his own mental instability because every time he laughed to forget about the pain, he was spiraling

further and further down this dark path he treads.

Even as he tries to think about what he feels is so wrong about him, he can’t word it. He won’t. If he were to word his pain, how would he be able to just laugh it off as the goings of life? He set the towel aside and picked up the razor. He looked at the blades on the shaver and wondered what it would feel like pressing them into his skin. How deep would he need to go before drawing blood? How hard would he have to press to feel pain? Would pain on the outside mitigate the pain he feels everyday when he begins to think about life?

No. He throws the razor onto the floor. The sound of it smacking against the cold marble floor snaps him out of his daze. Pain only brings more pain, not remedies it. He wraps himself in his bath robe, the only embrace he feels comfortable with because he trusts no one. He looks at his face in his mirror. He looks at himself, he looks at what he hates the most. Himself. How could he expect people to love him when he didn’t love himself? He didn’t understand the meaning of love.

He lets out a laugh and smiles, the smile he shows everyone, even himself because that is what he does. He falls deeper and deeper into the Hell of his mind and then climbs back out with a smile on his face. He can keep this up till his dying breath because he must. It is the only thing keeping him breathing.