Un-emotional

My best feature use to be my smile, and I smiled all the time.  Over time that has changed because the surgeries have changed not only my smile, but also the shape of my face. 

Presently I smile as much as I can.  Of course, there are times that I can’t.  Smiling is physically painful for me.  If I go out with friends and smile a lot I regret it the next day.  I wake up and my entire face aches and throbs. 

In addition, I work at a local high school and attempt to smile while I teach; however, I can’t.  This is not to say that I never smile, but I can’t always smile when I want to.  Sometimes my face hurts too much and I am physically incapable of smiling.  I sometimes wonder if my students think that I am constantly unemotional or in a serious mood?  I try to use sarcasm and humor to make up for my lack of smiling, but it is not the same.

On the contrary, I absolutely, positively cannot cry.  According to many on the Internet, it takes 17 muscles to smile and 43 muscles to frown.  While, I do not know if this is accurate, I do know that it kills me to cry.  Once I start crying, I typically can’t stop because the pain from crying is so great.  Now some feel that crying is not a necessary emotion, and they believe people can show sadness/frustration in a variety of ways.  I am not a big crier; however, I would like to cry when it is appropriate.  For instance, the other day I received bad news about someone I knew.  Instead of crying, I took several deep breaths every time I started to get upset, which is not the same. 

I am hoping that after I am healed I will be able to smile without worrying about how much it will hurt later.  I want to take the simple act of smiling for granted once again.  I use to love smiling. 

All in all, I just want to be healed.  I want to be able to appropriately show emotions.  I don’t think that is asking for too much.