During my good days, I always believed, and I guess some part of me still believes, that you should always smile when in public. I tell my children, always smile and never dismiss anyone because you never know what others are going through. Maybe that smile or that hello is what helps someone feel better about themselves or helps them see that not everyone is judging them or ignoring them.
This is something I have always done; hello to the cash register operator, smile at people as we cross paths on the footpath. And I did not think anyone really bothered with me doing it. Until one day, someone who I use to think was a friend, not a best friend but a friend, told me that I walk around the town like I own it, like I am so much better than others. When I asked them what they meant, they replied, “you are always smiling and so nice to people. It’s annoying to watch”. First, how does someone say that to another person … where do they get the impression that it is ok to complain about how happy someone seems. Is it because they themselves are not that happy and don’t like others to be? Obviously, the saying – misery loves company – comes to mind. But what that person did not realize is that the need for my “friend” to make me feel bad for spreading happiness was yet another trigger for one of my declines into blackness. I was not strong enough to dismiss the comment as their own problem, not mine. I was not strong enough to ignore my raging thought that everyone in our town thought the same thing. I was not strong enough to think logically and realized that that person was not a friend but a grim reaper of my soul. I was not strong enough to stop myself. I was not strong enough.
Even today, reliving that experience, my chest rises and falls with pain, with tightness; my eyes start to water and my anger is rising. How do I let people get to me like this? And why. Just why? I don’t understand what makes people think they the authority to speak to someone like that, to have such disregard for how their words affect people. Even though I understand that people are this rude and horrible it still hurts. I would not say anything like that to anyone I know or don’t know because smiling and being happy does not hurt anyone. It is the one thing that costs you nothing but can be worth a lot to someone else. Except when you are me and you have the “friends” I have, it then costs you enough.
Silence of Depression 