Soup-e Jo (Persian Chicken & Barley Soup)

Smile, Even When

There are mornings when it feels like I wake inside a stalled machine. The engine roars, thoughts spinning faster than I can catch them, but nothing moves. I sit there in my own body, stranded, as if life has shifted into neutral and left me watching the world slide past without me. That is the work of depression. It floods the tank, strips the gears, makes a human being into something that looks alive but refuses to go forward.

And still—I am here.

Depression isn’t a storm that blows through, leaving broken branches behind. It is stitched into my wiring, welded into the frame. I cannot outrun it. I cannot switch it off. I can only live alongside it. And yes, I get angry. Angry at the hours it steals. Angry at myself for not being able to silence it. That anger is the ember I clutch when all else burns out—the proof that something in me still fights.

But depression is also a liar. It whispers that I am failing, that I am unworthy, that I am too much and never enough. No one needs to say cruel things to me—my own mind is fluent in them. It is a familiar soundtrack I never chose, but one I’ve heard so long I know every verse.

I know its patterns now. The way it enters quietly, no knock, no warning, until it’s seated heavy across my shoulders. The way it presses close, like a leaden cloak, suffocating yet familiar. Strange how what unravels you can also feel known. I can map its outlines in the dark, hear its breath at the door before it crosses the threshold.

On the hardest days, when nothing inside me turns over, I remind myself to lift my face anyway. To bend my mouth toward light, even when every part of me feels undone. A smile won’t mend what’s broken, but it refuses the lie that brokenness is the whole story. It says: I am not finished.

Two months ago, I stopped pretending. The mask grew too heavy, and I set it down. My body refused before my spirit would admit defeat. I disappeared into silence. And here is the truth I’ve learned in being honest about that: please don’t blame me for disappearing. It isn’t rejection. It isn’t punishment. It is survival. The people who understand don’t press. They wait. They check in quietly. They don’t make a spectacle of my absence, and they don’t demand explanations when I return. That kind of kindness is oxygen. I cannot tell you how much it means.

The truth is, we all wear masks. We powder the cracks, straighten the collars, practice the lines, hoping no one notices the shadows behind our eyes. Some masks are elaborate, some are plain, but every one is designed to shield the tender truth: we are breakable. Beneath all the polish and postures, beneath our convictions and costumes, we are the same raw material—flesh, blood, longing.

Depression strips me to that recognition. It levels the ground. And in the leveling, I find clarity: the smallest acts matter. Rising from bed. Washing a dish. Stepping outside when the sky feels too wide. Breathing when breath itself feels like work. These become victories, each one a refusal to vanish.

So I will keep smiling when I can. Not as disguise. Not as performance. But as declaration. Smiling does not deny sorrow; it traces resilience onto a face that has known it well. And when the shadows return—as they will—I will hold to this: the darkness is not the whole story.

If you, too, are carrying weight no one sees, know this—you are not alone. The quiet act of continuing, of trying again tomorrow, is not weakness. It is the fiercest testament to being alive.

Because in the end, our story has never been about perfection. It has always been about persistence. About coaxing the stalled engine back to life, inching forward through fog, refusing to surrender the road.

And life—no matter the sorrow—is still worthwhile.