Fake Smile...

The smile you see on my face is no longer real. There is no truth behind it.

But it's there. It's there for you, not for me. It's there to demonstrate kindness, but not an inner expression of how I truly feel. It's there to show you I am not a threat, but it also takes everything in me to give it to you.

I have struggled with the smile for many years, but there have been some moments of sincerity behind it, but now, it is only an exertion of effort that has hardly any energy behind it at all. It has been slowly dying over the years with each passing trauma. It's the years of ungranted prayer requests to the Lord and watching my dreams die. It's the years of extreme physical limitations that have restricted me and held me back from being able to live and thrive and build a life and family of my own, only to be left to deal with the elderly in my family all alone to assist them and slowly watch them age and die to be left with complete uncertainty of my future. 

These people became my life. My existence. They needed someone and that someone became me and just me. Why? Why did it have to be just me? I did my best with what I had. I tried, but it wasn't enough to change anything. I can't change anything right now, so I still put on that fake smile for all of you to see. Just know, there is immense pain behind the smile, but it isn't your responsibility to fix it. It is what it is. It's how God wants it for now and there is no changing his mind. The world is still closed and there is no moving forward at all, but if and when it gets back to normal, is there even any time left in life to experience a true smile again? I don't even know.