A smile is an easy thing to fake

When I was 24, I worked at Half Price Books as a bookseller. I was a young, fresh grad from the University of Texas with dreams of publication, editing, writing, and immersing myself in the world of words. My first post-college editing job turned out to be a scam, so I applied for Half Price Books in hopes of at least getting a job, even if it was low-paying, even if it was retail.

I worked the closing shift--3PM to 11PM--nearly every workday and grew to like the night-focused schedule. I liked being on my feet, working with fellow artists, writers, and liberals, and being surrounded by books. I liked the quiet. The dust. The endless pages from used books packed with memories of their former readers: underlined sentences, small notes in the margins, dog-eared pages, and chapters with blood, coffee, wine, tear, and food stains.

When our shifts ended at 11PM, we'd lock the store and sometimes go to Workhorse, a nearby dive bar, for our "real" dinner and a beer before heading home, where I'd often continue to drink, downing a full bottle of cabernet every night before joining my then-husband where he slept in bed. "I'm unhappy in this marriage," I said one night, my lips stained red from wine, as he lay in bed. He shifted, and I knew he heard me. When you sleep in the same bed next to someone for years, you learn their breaths.

The difference between the gentle heaviness of a sleeping body and the stiff, intentional stillness of an awake one. And so, he said nothing.

Day after day, I went to a job that made my back ache and my determination fade. My husband had decided that his career was more important than my interest in a Masters of Fine Arts degree, so if I was to go back to school, it had to be in Austin, which meant applying to three of the best and most competitive MFA programs in the country, two of which were at the University of Texas, my alma mater, which greatly lowered my chances of acceptance in programs that accepted--on average--3 to 6 fiction students out of 1,000+ applicants a year.

After years of unaddressed depression and marriage struggles and two years of retail and rejected MFA applications, I had gained 30 pounds, was disabled from spine issues, and treating my hopelessness with alcohol, hydrocodone, kratom, xanex, and self-harm. Having been raised in an environment that saw medication as dangerous and unnecessary, I refused to try antidepressants and instead favored my own methods of coping, and I began losing myself as my attempts at improving my life continued to fail.

Each day, I'd go to work at 3PM, take my "lunch" at 7PM, and pop one hydrocodone after lunch to get me through the rest of my shift. And every day, men would tell me to smile.

I think men--the men who don't say it--believe that "you should smile" is something women don't actually hear, but I heard it regularly: shelving books in a corner by myself, sitting at the register, pricing books at the buy counter...if a man saw me passively doing an act with a neutral expression, I was told to smile.

I'm not sure how good at hiding my depression I've been throughout my life. My partner at any given time--of which there haven't been many--should have known, but the signs were often ignored: new bandages on my wrist, drunken nights of vomiting and sobbing, the inability to call for a therapist, losing interest in my hobbies. My ex-husband ignored my self-harm, drinking, and cries of unhappiness.

Depression makes people uncomfortable.

Until this year, my depression made me uncomfortable, too. I never felt like I was depressed enough or in the same way as other people to truly claim the debilitating condition, and I had a lifelong fear and resistance to antidepressants, so I coped in the ways I knew how, feeling ashamed of my methods and my poor mental health, at once. But when I started feeling the urge to drive recklessly, and when the suicidal ideations started, I knew something had to change.

In this journey now, I'm finding it hard to know when it ends: the pain, the suffering, the questioning, the self-doubt.

When you haven't felt like yourself in years, it can be hard to remember that she's still there, that she's rooting for you, that she forgives you, that she's ready and waiting to reemerge when you're ready.

I have to remember that she--the real me underneath the coping, the depression, the shame--is still there and that she has been fighting for me along. That she holds my smile--the joyful one, the shining one, the real one--and that she will be back.

And won't it be beautiful when the world sees that smile.