STORY 3: Smiling While Drowning
- Afia Pomaa Agyei
- Dec 20, 2025
- 3 min read
STORY 3: Smiling While Drowning
People described Adwoa as light.
The kind that entered a room before she did.
She laughed easily—a warm, contagious sound that softened tense spaces and stitched strangers together. Her smile arrived quickly and stayed long, curving gently as if it had learned patience from years of practice. When people were tired, she energized them. When they were sad, she distracted them. When they were angry, she calmed them.
No one asked where her energy came from.
At work, Adwoa was the morale booster. The one who brought snacks on hard days. The one who remembered inside jokes and anniversaries. When deadlines crushed spirits, she cracked jokes. When meetings dragged, she volunteered to help.
“She’s always okay,” people said.
Adwoa learned early that being useful made her visible.
As a child, she was praised for not causing trouble. When her parents argued, she became the peacemaker. When money ran thin, she learned to ask for less. When her siblings cried, she comforted them—even when she was crying too.
Somewhere along the way, she decided her feelings could wait.
Waiting became a habit.
By adulthood, Adwoa wore happiness like a uniform. It fit well. It was clean, reliable, admired. People trusted her because she never appeared overwhelmed.
But drowning does not always look like chaos.
Sometimes it looks like competence.
Sometimes it looks like laughter.
Sometimes it looks like someone who keeps swimming long after their muscles start to fail.
At night, when the world finally quieted, Adwoa felt the weight she carried all day settle onto her chest. The room felt too loud with thoughts she had postponed. She lay awake replaying conversations, questioning whether she had said too much—or not enough.
She told herself tomorrow would be better.
Tomorrow always came with the same script.
A smile. A joke. A check-in text.
Inside, her breath shortened.
The first panic attack arrived without warning.
She was in a supermarket aisle, reaching for bread, when her vision blurred. Her heart raced as if she were running, though her body stood still. The shelves tilted. Her hands trembled.
She smiled instinctively at a stranger who brushed past her.
Even then.
She locked herself in the bathroom and waited it out, counting tiles, whispering reassurances she had offered others a hundred times.
“You’re okay.”
“You’re safe.”
She did not tell anyone.
Adwoa feared the questions.
What’s wrong? Why are you stressed? You? But you’re always so happy.
So she kept smiling.
She smiled through exhaustion. Smiled through loneliness. Smiled through the ache of being known only for what she could give.
When her friend Kojo finally noticed something was off, he asked gently, “Are you okay—really?”
The question startled her.
She opened her mouth to answer automatically.
“I’m fine.”
The words stuck.
For the first time, the script failed her.
Tears arrived quietly, as if they had been waiting for permission.
Kojo sat with her in the car as the rain began to fall, not rushing her, not fixing anything. Just present.
“I don’t know how to not be okay,” she confessed.
The truth landed heavier than she expected.
Adwoa realized she had trained herself out of honesty. Out of need. Out of rest.
Healing did not happen instantly.
It happened in small, uncomfortable choices.
Saying no without explanation.
Letting messages wait.
Admitting she was tired.
The first time she cancelled plans for her mental health, guilt flooded her. But relief followed closely behind.
She learned that drowning is often silent—and that survival sometimes means letting people see you struggle.
Adwoa still smiled.
But now, it wasn’t armor.
It was a choice.
And when the waves rose, she finally allowed herself to float.
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