Thorned

I am a chameleon. No, I am not a bug-eyed reptile lolling her tongue to snack on oblivious insects, nor am I one of your featured Animal Planet rarities with my magnificent secrets televised. I am the mistress of camouflage, of costume and disguise, color and blend. I am a chameleon, understand, simply because you will never see who I really am. Like the black-tie murderers you watch sometimes in action films, clad in sleek, black suits and deceiving smirks. When people draw near me they are innocent to how I slip in and out of their hues or of those they would admire – surely, everyone and anyone’s skin except my own.

–

While sitting alone in the waiting room I can already feel my layers slipping away. I cling to them, desperately trying to hold myself together. I don’t want to be here. My stomach feels full and nauseous even though I only ate a bagel three hours ago, two hours before we drove from Maryland to Philadelphia, one hour after I woke up for my first psychologist appointment. Besides a faint buzz from the ceiling lights, it is silent. Stacks of magazines, ranging from fashion to family life, cover the surface of a rectangular table at my knees. I lean forward to flip through the new February ‘08 issue of one, but my mind always wanders back to what I will say or how Dr. Thorne will interpret me. She must be really good if one of my mother’s best friends recommended her. What makes a “really good” psychologist anyway?

I try to focus on the chai latte walls and the framed portraits scattered on them. One reminds me of Hamlet – but instead of a skull, the slouched figure holds a small black bird. Farther left hangs a house on a lake. Maybe the people who live in that house are happier than my family. I can’t turn my neck any farther so I look out the window ahead of me, but my view of parked cars is blocked by a plant sprouting long, sloping leaves from the middle of its soil pot. If I were an ant, I would slide down each of them to the singed tips that touch the table. My gaze moves to the right of the window and stops at the door leading outside. I sigh.
There are business cards propped and arranged on a stand, each stack belonging to a different therapist who works here. If I look over my right shoulder, I can see the room I will be entering soon – the room in which Dr. Thorne and my mother dissect my parents’ separation. There are four other doors, but they have no significance to me.

Restless, I alternate between sitting, pacing on the gray-blue carpet, and slumping back into the couch patterned with gold and brown diamonds. The pillows don’t match, with long, twisted tassels hanging all around the edges like thick, white hair. They are too big to clutch to my chest, but then I realize I never do that anymore. I think that’s a good thing.

My head snaps when I hear the chink and clink of a doorknob. I have an instant smile prepared and my mind goes mute.

–

“Your mother said something before she left the room and ever since, you’ve had the biggest smile on your face,” Dr. Thorne inquires as she peers at me through rectangular lenses. She has a short hedge of curly brown hair and a soft, freckled face, tinged pink at the height of her cheekbones. Her black stone earrings dangle and reflect a dull crescent of light as she sits back in her caramel suede sofa. I would think her African American, but her middle name, Martinez, suggests otherwise.

My mother had told Dr. Thorne she was worried that her separation from my father was taking a heavy toll on me. Then she had brought up high school and how unhappy I used to be – a state of melancholy she was afraid I would fall into again. It was then that my smile stretched as wide as my cheeks would allow – currently wearing thin and quivering against a swell of sadness.
“It’s just that…” I begin, but pause to brace against a warm tingling sensation that spreads through my nose. “I’ve worked so hard to begin this new stage of my life, my first semester of college, as positive and upbeat. And then my life takes this drastic dip and I can’t do anything about it.”

I wonder how comfortable I feel sitting in this small square room, stripping down for a stranger. But I remind myself she isn’t just a stranger, because to my right hangs her various sized certificates. On one of them, above the desk and tucked-in chair, I catch a glimpse of the words Columbia University. I have longed to be understood, and this is my chance – so I peel back the cheap wallpaper of repression, revealing a layer I thought was shed long ago.

–

The morning bell is going to ring soon, signaling to the hordes of students posing against lockers and lounging on the tiled hallways to funnel into their classrooms. I am already sitting at my desk, awaiting freshman Biology class to begin. Half of me wishes I knew people to chat with outside, but the other half finds it hard to make friends. Everyone is so impersonal and distant here. I miss my private Muslim school – the place I spent eight years of my life, where everyone felt like family.
People are beginning to file in and find their seats. The girl across from me is talking about her project for AP Government and Politics. She turns to look at me, smiles, and repeats what she was telling her friend.

“My group had to make up a political party, and now we have to get people to join. Here’s the form,” she explains as she hands me a sheet of paper with a list of platforms. I am about to write my name on the blank line when a boy walks over – a boy with acne-blemished cheeks and train-track braces, red crew-cut hair and a pear-sized nose. He walks with a tall, lanky body and talks with a scratchy pubescent voice – an ugly boy who only has ugly words, and who I will never forget.

“No, you should join my political party. We support terrorists. Haha.”

I am thirteen and I have nothing to say.

–

These walls were trees in a past lifetime, but these walls have seen more tears than those trees have felt raindrops. Now they watch my tears rush down my burning cheeks and I cover my face, embarrassed with my outburst. “I’m sorry… It was five years ago,” I choke, “I don’t know why I’m crying.”

“It’s okay if you cry. It was a hateful thing to say, and it brought up pain that you’ve been holding inside for a long time.” Dr. Thorne’s voice mends cracks in my heart that I didn’t know I had. I melt into the chocolate-colored couch and it embraces me, softening to my cross-legged form. It comforts me with cushions as if to say, “I am here to hold you as you pour yourself into this room. I know it’s hard, I know it’s draining. But I will help you.”

I take a deep breath and continue to describe the way high school was the most miserable four years of my life. Ninth grade was the first time in eight years that I wasn’t in a strict Muslim school environment. Coming from a life of uniform, daily Islamic Studies classes, and strict separation from boys, the life of a typical high school student was alien. I barely knew the first words of the Pledge of Allegiance, vaguely recognized any artists besides Celine Dion, and the sight of a mini skirt repulsed me. Out of touch with American social culture, I didn’t know how to relate to people, let alone develop friendships. It wasn’t until the end of junior year that I began to feel at ease there, or gain confidence and self-esteem. But no matter how unstable I became, I always maintained good grades – it was my self-deceiving coping mechanism. My state of mind was a delicate house of cards and a hovering B always threatened it with collapse. I have also been blessed with one of those smiles that can mask just about anything I feel underneath. I don’t even have to worry about my eyes.

“I never talked about it with anyone,” I tell her, “I’m always afraid I’ll overwhelm people with my problems and push them away.” Dr. Thorne scribbles on her yellow notepad, nodding and making small comments whenever I pause. My heart races, and my words run together while my hands struggle to express them – clenching, spreading open – both moving simultaneously in the air. My voice cracks sporadically and my foot taps the floor. My mouth is dry and my lips are chapped no matter how often I spread them with lip balm. I lose my breath.

“Did you ever consider that you, not your listener, are the one overwhelmed?” the psychologist asks. She describes how the human body reacts to anxiety – a surprising connection to how I feel whenever I talk about myself. Astonished, I now see how I blindly project my discomfort – realizing that in this room, I will finally catch my breath. “What about now? Do you talk to anyone about your family?”

“There was one person, but we aren’t friends anymore.” Looking up at the outline of two sketched pots, hung above the bookshelf, I can almost feel my camouflage being tugged off. This loss is fresh and current, making it hard to strip away and scrutinize. I don’t want to talk about it, so I summarize: I had believed this person was my best friend in the making, but by the end of the semester, he made me lose all faith in the delicate phenomenon of a best friend. I went back to fighting silent battles and it only made the situation harder to manage. I was trying to make the transition from high school to college, take care of my mother and siblings, plan my future, establish close friendships, and be active on campus all at once – but only about two fifths of everything was working out the way I intended.

“I know you like order, and you have quite a way with words, so let’s try to organize all of this into an expression. You are stuck in this… multidimensional madness,” she coins it, “But you are also fast-forwarding your life and you just need to slow down.” Dr. Thorne uses her hands to shape her words just as much as I do, but with all the composure a psychologist is trained to have. “And you have to understand that it is not your place to protect your mother. She can take care of herself. You need to work on taking care of you.” I had hardly noticed I spent the semester making up for lost time, or what I took as responsibility to my family was never mine to take. Am I not meant to be there for my mother when she is in distress? Or for my younger siblings, to dilute the emotional concentration that could potentially engulf them? “What’s more, it’s okay not to talk about this with your friends. There are things meant for friends, and others for therapists or counselors.”

“I never realized that there’s a fine line between a therapist and a friend,” I ponder aloud. I thought that if I felt comfortable enough to tell someone about the complexities of my life, it meant we were close. Apparently my disappointments in people didn’t always come from their shortcomings, but from my unrealistic expectations of friendships. “But how do I know where to draw the line?”

Dr. Thorne explains the boundaries involved, and I watch as my perspectives are shifted and reversed. We are inching towards the central reason I am here – the notion of boundaries. I have managed to wedge myself in the crack that is snaking through my parents’ relationship. Both are using me as a confidante, but she tells me it is wrong and I must step down from the role of mediator. I need to focus on being Salma.

–

Our basement resembles a home theatre, complete with surround sound and a television so tall it’s only inches from the ceiling. There is a kitchen behind the sitting area, and the electric fireplace to my left flickers against the adjacent wall. Volver is beginning, and my father is sitting on the other end of the couch. “Did you hear what Mama wants?” he asks. I did, but I respond ambiguously to let him carry the weight of the conversation.

“What?”

“She wants us to get divorced,” he pauses, all the while staring at the screen. It illuminates his face in a glowing movement of lights. “I think it’s the right thing. Isn’t that what you said last time? That it’s what we should do?”

I remember our last conversation, and how he was thoroughly against the very idea. He thought we could live forever with my mother upstairs, and him in the bedroom to the right of the television we are watching. To him, keeping the family together was better for the kids. I don’t understand this drastic change in thought. “I don’t know.”

“But it’s what you said last time, so…” he shrugs and continues to gaze straight ahead. I used to think he was trying to communicate with these conversations, but they only make my stomach twist. I wish he would stop.

“I just… I don’t know. I can’t make this decision for you.”

“But you’re right. We can’t live like this. I can’t pretend anymore.”

Confused and angry, my mind is wired and I can’t find the circuit breaker. My entire body tenses and I bite down hard on my lip. I am glad it is dark. I force myself to concentrate on the movie because it is in Spanish and the subtitles don’t linger long enough.

–

The closest thing to a window is an arched mirror framed in white. Resembling a cathedral, strips of ivory wood crisscross the top of the glass and run down the edges. It gives the room the feel of a sanctuary. (Since it’s near the door, I fancy that it’s for observing oneself before and after a session. I hope that I will always be able to look into mirrors as if I had never seen myself before.) I am glad that it hangs off-center on the opposite wall, because I know I wouldn’t be able to watch myself unravel.

“Your father has failed to maintain the… what is it you call your father?”

“Baba.”

“The Baba frame,” she finishes, and outlines a box in the air with her index fingers. For him to pin me down and ask me what he should do, and then hold my words hostage, is not the way a father should interact with his daughter. I should not be the counselor or therapist in his situation with my mother. We discuss that no matter how hard it will be, I must learn how to talk to him. Because weeds turn into shrubbery, and shrubbery becomes a forest, I must pull those weeds before they have grown too profusely between us. I have to tell him how he makes me feel, what I truly want from him; that although he has caused me an assortment of pain, he is still my father and I love him.

We have been here for three hours. This session isn’t meant to be so long, but I am glad Dr. Thorne lets me stay. When she speaks, her words penetrate a deeper level (my soul, perhaps) and it is hard not to be emotional around her. Maybe it hurts to be peeled away like this, maybe that’s why I cry. I have never emptied so much of myself into one person, one room – the faces I have worn and the faces my family has imprinted on me. I am left with a clear and filtered image of who I am. Speaking to a psychologist is nothing more than starring into a mirror and looking past my skin.

In here, I am what I feel. Everything makes sense. With leagues of emotions to explore, I could stay hours longer if the process wasn’t so draining. There is a great deal that we talk about, but there is only so much I can reveal to you. After all, I am a chameleon.