as small as a world and as large as alone

3:06am June 14, 2014

eeebeesee:

Buster Keaton taught me that it was okay if you didn’t want to smile. Twice.

The first time it was when I was young, and everyone existed in this far away place that I wasn’t a part of. And they wanted me to engage in actions I didn’t understand, like smiling. They pressured and bullied me into contorting my face into an expression that didn’t come naturally to me, and I failed to understand how I could be happy when I was engaging in an action that wasn’t authentic to me.

They seemed happier when I smiled, so maybe it was the correct thing to do? Their happiness was more important than mine. So, I learnt to smile- it became natural, it became reactive, it became second nature.

Then during my teens, I think I became depressed. Things stopped making what sense I had made them adhere to, and people seemed more alien to me. But, I continued to smile because of the now internalised idea of their happiness being more important than mine. This action made them happy, and to be perfectly frank I didn’t feel anything anymore- not for a long time.

Then, at 20/21- I started feeling things again. I don’t know why because these things were vastly unhappy, so one night I decided to switch on an old film. Buster Keaton film- people liked him, even though he didn’t smile. He was expressive in other ways and that was apparently fine, so maybe it was okay not to smile? I stopped holding my jaw tense, and I let my face settle into the deadpan expression of my childhood, and I felt comforted.

Maybe, it didn’t matter what other people wanted. Maybe- it mattered what I wanted, and the first step in that was sorting my physicality. Buster Keaton is allowed not to smile, because his personality and talents overwhelm the social construct of smiling. Maybe, I just need to sort where I am, and what I will do.

I don’t think I have to smile to be an acceptable human being anymore.

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