Someone dear to me asked how I could still smile. I could not answer. It was not clear if the question referred to all the bad I have done or the trauma done to me. I did not ask. I felt a pang of guilt and betrayal that I could still smile. And I was confused. I could not answer.

A friend in AA told me once that happiness is a choice. I hated her for those words. How could I possibly make a choice to be happy?

Those were dark years. No alcohol and reality slapping me upside the head like a restless tide crashing the shore. Newly addressing the fact that my children were then gone five years and not coming back and the beginning of facing my childhood and my life for what it was, trauma after trauma.

I have learned a lot, and suffered a lot in the thirty years since. All that is lost to me can never be regained. I refer to people, not things. If I do not choose to smile and be happy with what is, there is no point in moving forward. If there is naught but suffering, what is my reason for being?

I also learned in AA that pain is mandatory while suffering is optional. I had a hard time with that concept. Everything hurt so much.

A person once told me that a religious nut told her about me, “Some people are just born to suffer.” I resented that. Here was a person who knew nothing about me but lies told to her, and she dismissed me with a few cutting words and perhaps the wave of her hand. And of course further proof god hated me, or at best was a callous moron.

There will always be pain and just like the rain comes after the sun, there will be joy. My pain never goes away. But when suffering tries to settle in I turn my back to it and walk away.

Have most people suffered so little that they must wring every ounce of suffering they can from life? Is it wrong to smile through the pain? Is it strength to be able to set aside pain, perhaps in a locked box on the shelf and feel life’s warm breezes and sunshine?

How can I still smile? How can I not? I have survived much to get to this place in me. besides it is the best I can offer the rest of the world around me when I go out my door. I smile, they smile, we all feel better for it. Smiling is right up there with laughter as the best medicine.