🙃 Upside-down smiley face

https://emojipedia.org/upside-down-face/

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Finally, an emoji I can relate to on a deeply personal level. No, on an ideological level. The upside-down smiley emoji expresses who I strive to be: someone who smiles through the pain.

And that pain, my friends, is life. Yes, this terrifying, messy shitstorm of a non-event that is happening to us all through no fault or decision of our own, but is happening nonetheless. Look, I’m a young person, I have hormones and feelings and shit and life can be hard (not that I didn’t choose to swirly my own face in the emotional toilet of university for the foreseeable future, but that’s for another article), and sometimes it’s equally hard to view things positively. Sometimes everything just sucks, and you can’t smile sardonically in everything’s face.

So no, I don’t try to see everything through rose-coloured glasses — seems a little fainthearted to me, if I’m being honest — but I do try to just be real with myself. Don’t wanna get out of bed? That’s fine, me. Don’t want to put up with that “teacher” who wastes an hour of your life three times a week? I feel you, me. Would really prefer not to go to work (aka the graveyard of ambitions) after class? Right there with you, me. But hey, we gotta do what we gotta do because those drinky-poos ain’t gonna buy themselves.

So you see, I look up to the upside-down smiley face emoji. It’s right there with me and gets it. I guess he’s like Jesus in a way. He looks around and sees all the other emojis doing normal emoji shit and he’s over there on the third page, upside-down, having a rough time. Hardly seems fair, but he’s determined to smile anyways.