Smile!

Chinelo Osakwe '23

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I feel so down in the dumps.

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Deep in the blues.

 

These swiggly lines invade the area in my brain intended for good mental health, acting as explanation for why I am the way I am. These swiggly lines, or circles, or a masquerade ball hosted by laughing emojis and hysterical tears (oh, my! the tears…) continue to praise us, praise us, for our inner corruption.

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The society we live in today—the one we created and befriended as frenemies—leaves us mourning a happy and peaceful state of mind. Mourning smiley faces and redundant hoorahs… no more hoorahs. No more hoorahs.

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The prickly point of a piceous pen scrapes the last of the perky shavings from a pristine piece of plain, white paper. Pure disruption: disrupting the peace! I do not wish to be drawn, nor fabricate an unspoken truth—an unspoken feeling as though I am more content with my life and being than evidently proven. Those words are verbal diarrhea; they are nothing but examples of my clouded distortion, which is never portrayed in my demeanor, just to be clogged, clogged, clogged… I do not wish to be drawn.

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But they begin, slowly. Slowly, as quick and rushed as ants escaping a vengeful human foot, a curved line is placed just to the right of perfect on the tree bark that is called paper. The line shivers but proceeds to lay itself out, carefully resembling a bullied circle.

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I stare at this “circle.” This “Smiley Face.” It does not look happy. The smile operates as a façade for desolation, not a sincere crease of jubilation. I am drawn. My life was drawn by a depressed kindergartener and published by their school newspaper as Exemplary Work—but my face: it contains vibrant merriment painted only by Picasso, and by Picasso only.

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Simply a pretext for my dysphoria.