The Mask

My new therapist looked like Luna Lovegood from the Harry Potter novels. Her hair was more white than blonde, set off by pale skin and delicate, ethereal features. The entire look was accentuated by a breathy, melodic tone of voice and an affinity towards dressing like a young bohemian. Today she wore a colorful, fringed shawl over a pale pink, silk dress, the hem of which brushed against the tops of her Doc Martens. I smiled at her as if I wasn’t judging the fact that she was 22 years old and still a few months out from receiving her graduate degree in psychology. I was going to end up as a subject in her grad school thesis: “38-year-old woman presents with 25-year history of a restricting/purging type eating disorder.”

Patients were assigned upon intake to one of the four therapists on staff; I guess it was Luna’s turn for a newcomer. I had a hard time believing that anyone this young had the knowledge or the capacity to do this job. If she were the doctor in charge at the emergency room when I came in with chest pains, I’d find my way to the next closest hospital. But here I sat, on a dingy loveseat in a freezing cold office that my neophyte therapist had to borrow because she wasn’t technically a full-time employee. I had to entrust my life and my mental health to a literal child because I did not want to be labeled as “difficult” and somehow ruin my chances of a rapid release from this place.

After taking my time to answer her first few questions with enthusiasm and detail, Luna looked up from her computer with her head cocked to one side and said thoughtfully, “You seem like you are trying to impress me.”

It wasn’t a question or an accusation, just a simple statement that could not have been more accurate. While her level of emotional intelligence may have been higher than I expected, I was not about to let her in on my master plan of “winning” at treatment.

“I don’t know what you mean?” I said, feigning confusion.

“You don’t have to pretend here. I know that you have spent a long time masking, showing everyone else a version of you that is perfect and has it all together. You don’t have to do that here.”

I crossed and then uncrossed my legs, shifting on the small couch, trying to get comfortable while young Luna seemed to stare into the recesses of my brain. Was I that easy to figure out? Did I fit the personality stereotype of the eating disorder sufferer so well that she could simply refer to one of her textbooks to diagnose my behaviour? I may have underestimated her prowess; I had never had an issue fooling anyone before.

I started creating my mask at eight years old; it had been curated and carefully polished over the course of my life, to the point where I didn’t even notice the shift between wearing it and taking it off. Or perhaps it was that I so rarely removed it that it had taken over who I really was. I spent three decades of my life thinking that I was an extrovert before realizing that social interaction left me exhausted. But introversion was not going to serve me when I changed schools every year from third grade to ninth grade. From a young age, I learned to read others, conform to what was popular, and, above all, be likable. There was no room for personal preferences, quirks, or opinions that strayed from what was socially acceptable, and what trumped all of this was, of course, weight and physical appearance.

The first time my family moved, we went from a city in the southernmost part of the United States to one where it was not uncommon to see a snowstorm in May. The weather was far from being the biggest difference in our new residence. As soon as any one of us opened our mouths, the slow southern drawl drew adverse reactions and prejudice from everyone in that small Wisconsin town. From the first day of school, my brother and I were bullied so relentlessly that the priority became doing anything possible to relearn how to talk with what they considered to be an appropriate dialect. Even the teachers contributed as we were singled out for answering “yes ma’am” and made to feel as if the phrase was somehow disrespectful, even though it was required in our school in Alabama.

It only took a few months before I mastered the new accent, but now, when we traveled home to visit relatives, they laughed and mimicked the way that I talked and called me a “Yankee." I did my best to switch vernacular based on where we were and who we were with to avoid the attention until eighteen months later, when we moved again. This time to Tennessee, back to the South, where we belonged. Before starting school, I studied how everyone spoke, how the kids my age dressed, and what music and television shows were “cool.” I was not going to repeat the same mistake of simply being who I was and hoping everyone would accept me. At nine years old, I was a chameleon, ready to change colors based on other people's desires because I would do anything to avoid rejection for being different.

“I have no reason to pretend. I’m just here to get better and return to my family,” I said with conviction. “I think I’m just nervous.”

Luna’s mouth turned upward into an infuriatingly smug little smile while fireworks went off in my head. I didn’t realize that my body was giving off tells; hands clenched, face flushed, showing Luna my true feelings even though I refused to speak them out loud. She had no right to tug at my facade, and after wearing it for thirty years, I was not ready to show anyone what was behind it. The mask was the only thing that would get me through this phase of my life, as it had so many times before. I could not bear the thought of going back to the way things were before I started wearing it.

More to come,