Seething smiles

I come from a family of passive aggressive women who consider it only polite to make people miserable with smiles that chill your blood.

We were taught to be people pleasers at all costs and to believe that all mis-truths are only little white lies told with the best of intentions.

The havoc this has wreaked on our lives, not to mention all those other lives we touched is unbelievable. It is, perhaps, the most evil way of communicating that is possible.

It provokes the kind of seething anger that causes heart attacks, destroying marriages, friendships, and relationships of all sorts, because eventually there will be a mind blowing volley of truth that erupts from lips stretched too tight for too long.

It is not rational.

Or healthy.

Or really even normal.

It is something I have spent years disposing of, but it lingers in the fringes of the older generation reminding me how cruel it is.