Putting On

I thought that this picture would be a cool way to illustrate my point very well.

I think we all have those days where we don't feel our best physically and mentally and we find ourselves "putting on" a smile when we want to frown and laughing when we want to cry. The difference is when this becomes a habit.  When we find ourselves doing this everyday.  When
"putting on" becomes the norm.

I think for me I found myself doing this so much and with so many people until I really couldn't tell who was who.  Who was the real me?

The sad part is, is that it got to where I didn't even know when I was doing it.  Sometimes I actually felt like I was being myself but I really wasn't.  I lost track of my true feelings.

There were moments when I felt okay enough to share a little bit of my true self but the truth was so far beyond my own recognition.  I couldn't even recognize that I was depressed or that something was wrong.  Putting on and then feeling sad because an every day thing.  It was my life.

What happens when WRONG=RIGHT?

Depression became the normal.  When I would come home I took that Candace off and felt exhausted.  In the morning when I put that Candace on I hated it.  I hated being "happy" and smiling because of how it made me feel afterwards, but sadly I didn't know why.  I just felt like this is what I had to do to get through the day.  This was what was expected of me.

How to show the real me?  The real me.  The real me was non-existent.  She had disappeared one day without my realizing it and was replaced with this false person.  This unrealistic person.

One thing for sure is that you cannot "put on" the same clothes and wear them day after day without some wear and tear showing up.  Eventually holes appear, stains, wrinkles, they even began to smell.  The holes eventually showed what I tried to cover.  The stains and wrinkles revealed my true self.  I began to not be able to hide the real Candace anymore and that created a problem.  So when I couldn't hide myself in public anymore I just never wanted to show my face.

Openly Broken

Exert

 "I realized that I’d had my whole life to practice how to smile when I wanted to cry, laugh when I wanted to scream and just cover up my true feelings.  I realized that the face I showed the world and even myself was a facade, an imitation of what I wished I was."