Personal Narrative: The Perfect Life

You see them everywhere, the perfect people. You see them on the streets, at school, at work. You know the people I’m talking about. The ones that are always smiling, surrounded by friends. The people that never stop talking and their laughter is so contagious you can’t help but smile. You see these people everywhere. They seem to have it all. The perfect life, the perfect friends, the perfect everything. But the truth is, under all the smiling and laughter, no one truly has a perfect life. I have friends, two in particular, that I thought had it all . They both experienced things that you wouldn’t expect when you see them. They laugh and smile, just like everyone else. However, underneath, they were, and still are, struggling to be the people
At first, she was the same, she still smiled all the time. She still joked around. She would still laugh at my incredibly bad puns, even when we both knew they weren’t even worth laughing at. I hate to say it, but when her smile started to fade and I didn’t hear melodic laugh anymore, I didn’t notice. To me, she was still the happy and funny Audrey. To me, she was still a perfect person. She had it all, a nice house, good grades, and she’s was one of my best friends, one of the most amazing people that I had ever met. I couldn’t fathom how she could be anything less. She hid what she was going through from me so well. When she skipped school, she had a cold, or she needed a mental health day. There would be weeks when I wouldn’t see her at all. Still, when I did see her, she smiled. It wasn’t until I noticed her skipping lunch for a week, I truly noticed the change she had gone through in under a month. I finally realised the absence of her laugh in our conversations, and the bright smile that I didn’t see anymore. The girl who I thought had it all, was truly hurting on the inside. When I started asking what was wrong, she started coming clean about what she had been going through. At first she was quiet and reluctant to talk about it, not wanting to draw attention to herself. But the more we talked, the more it became clear that she was suffering from at least slight anxiety and depression. The only reason
“Yes, I ate dinner” to my parents, or “I’m not feeling well,” to my friends when I skip a day of school. From the outside, they still all see me as the happiest person. Most of the time I am happy, but sometimes the pressure of life is too much, and even if I want to talk to someone about it, my friends just wouldn’t understand. I know they see me as a person who has everything a girl could want, and I know I do. Whenever I had days that I wouldn’t eat, or felt like nothing could make me happy. I felt stupid. I felt as though I hadn’t lived through enough to feel the way I did. There would be days or weeks when everything would feel out of control. Those weeks were the times that I would find control in what I had myself eat. I knew I should talk to someone, but I knew people would think that I was only doing it for attention. And anyways, skipping a few meals wasn’t going to kill me. If I did tell someone, the person people thought I was would be ruined. Even if my life wasn’t as simple as people thought it was, it was easier to let them think it was than prove them