05.20.15

Japanese Maples

The days are tremulous. They waver up and down, up and down, like the Japanese maple leaves in her backyard. The leaves were prettiest in the autumn. Wildly red and candescent in the sun, they tumbled and played in the breeze, unburdened by creatures or strong winds. The weather, not too hot or cool, allowed their veins to flow with ease. But they transformed as the cold came in, as the winds grew heavier and more frequent, as the first snowflakes began to fall. Then they fell quickly, faster and faster, until the tree stood completely bare. The beautiful maple leaves, no longer lively or vibrant, lay shriveled around the base of the tree, looking up longingly at the place where they used to be happy. How did we get here? They wondered, Will we ever go back? And then the snow fell densely upon them, and their thoughts were silenced as they succumbed to darkness and cold.

I describe this deterioration as if it were caused by environmental factors, but really it was all in her head. And she knew it, too. But she kept it hidden away in there, so not many others knew about it. Only her family truly saw what it was and what it did. But not even they really knew. It was inexplicable. It was stupid.

“You know how they say men think about sex every seven seconds? Well I think about my skin every seven seconds. Maybe more. Maybe all the time.”

That’s what she tells her therapist during their first meeting. Well, their first in three years.

“Now that’s a big statement,” the doctor replies.

But it isn’t to her. It is normal. Excruciatingly normal.

It is springtime and the cold has begun to dissipate. And she is better, better than she was in the winter. February, the month she turned eighteen, was her worst. Her fuzzy blue bathrobe now hangs on her closet door, a reminder of the days she trudged around in a fog, drinking green tea, trying to heal herself, wondering if it was even possible. One time she curled up while the snow fell and watched Dirty Dancing, which she thought was a wonderful movie. But instead of remembering the exquisite dancing or the fantastic love story, she mainly recalls the beautiful smoothness of Baby and Johnny’s skin. She longs for it.

The thing is, people tell her that she has beautiful skin. Flawless, even. When they tell her this, she is surprised. How can they not see all these bumps? They must not be looking carefully enough.

The therapist tells her that her anxiety causes her to magnify small imperfections. So to her, blemishes look and feel much larger than they actually are.

It’s not easy to convince yourself that what you’re seeing or feeling to the touch is inaccurate.

The therapist then tells her that it’s not her skin that causes the anxiety, but that the anxiety latches onto her skin. “What we have to do,” she tells her, “is figure out how to put anxiety away in a corner, and keep it there.” The therapist makes anxiety sound like a criminal in her brain. The criminal she contains is quite persistent and unforgiving. He is constantly hungry. It’ll take some work to get rid of him.

It’s also not easy to combat something that is within yourself. Once you start taking punches, you cannot miss, for you may hit yourself instead.

Sitting in the black leather chair, she silently comes to the conclusion that she cannot trust herself right now. But she trusts her therapist, and wants to get better. So she’ll do what she says.

She smiles pleasantly at the therapist and nods. Time's up, time to go. She’ll be back next week.

At home, the leaves have grown back on the Japanese maple, and are changing colors, too. They started off a musky green, and are slowly evolving into deep, reddish purple. They clumsily whirl about, unsure and confused, knocking into each other in an attempt to catch the attention of the beaming sun. The purple isn’t as alluring as their once fiery sheen. Only a summer away until the red comes back, though, assuming the tree makes it.

Sometimes she feels as though she can make it, and sometimes she feels she can’t. Tremulous, up and down, up and down, the days seem out of her control.

What she needs is a mental staircase, but one that only goes up. One with a sturdy handrail. Up and up she’ll go, leaving the mischievous criminal behind to starve. She decides that she’ll try to build it, despite her extreme incompetence for carpentry. She has about three months to do it. And then she and her staircase will be gone.

She wonders if there will be Japanese maple trees at school.