Look how happy you look, Glenn said. He sounded kind of sad.
We were looking through some of my old pictures when he said it. Among all my old photos was a picture of me from about seventeen years ago that I don't remember being taken. I was in South Beach with my then best friend, Marnie, standing against a tree, smiling. I'm not just smiling, though...I'm frickin' glowing. My smile is big. Actually, forget big. My smile is huge. There's nothing reserved about it and nothing self-conscious; there's nothing calculated or posed; there's just me, looking happy.
And that is insane.
I look at more recent pictures of myself, pictures from the last however many years, and I don't look happy in any of them. I look at myself in the mirror, and there's no happiness there, either.
You know, I didn't think of this until just now, right this very second, but I remember that when I was younger, I covered my mouth and asked my mom if she could tell whether I was smiling or not just by looking at the top of my face. She told me that yes, she could, because I have smiley eyes.
Not anymore.
My smiles are all mouth now, no eyes. At some point, my smile just became too weak---too meek--too old--to unsure--too empty--too tentative--too tired--to make it that far. My smiley eyes are gone.
Look how happy you look, Glenn said. It made me kind of sad.
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