Passing

"Cheer up love, could be worse."
"Sorry?"
"Why the long face?"
"Oh nothing... my face is always like this."*
"You look like your cat died. You should try smiling more."

Everyone walks around with miserable faces, mine seems to be the one which attracts comment though. Just at the supermarket waiting in the queue, minding my own business, some old guy feels the need to pass comment. Why does everyone think I always look sad? I don't really concentrate on what my face is doing when I'm walking around. Apparently I walk like a man anyway, I stomp, I have bad posture, blah blah blah, something else I don't think about but others notice. But to cap it off I look sad all the time too. It's irritating me now, I might have stuff on my mind, I might be thinking about something endlessly happy, I also have my headphones which play my ... well it's not the happiest music, fine, but still it's mine. Just getting through the day, doesn't mean I need to constantly smile whilst outside, I do enough of it at my job and it's seemingly not enough, people notice when I'm not smiling. I almost feel happy for the first time in ages, almost content, almost relaxed, almost like I'm finally making sense of things. But my face, sour unhappy face which naturally seems to be in a perma-scowl, seems to be intent on making the world think I'm still at a point in my life where I would happily walk off a cliff. Go figure, I thought I was moving on, and not off a cliff, to better happier pastures. Perhaps I'm not fooling anyone...

*I was quoting Vivi from Final Fantasy IX. Complete accident but Eiko asks Vivi why the long face and that's his response, and that's how I responded. It's only after it happened I realised I said that, it was so fitting, if the old dude had seem my face after I'd realised that he would have seen delirious joy, shame.