Orange Chairs: Part 1

The pattern on the carpet, what does it look like? I kept thinking, staring at it. Uneven, sinister blue and red lines creating roads, splitting off into different directions, running through someones arm, thats it, veins. Why would someone choose this carpet? Who designed this? 

I was sitting uncomfortably in a plastic orange chair. Everyone was, and together we created a large circle of depressed, uncomfortable people sitting in bright orange chairs. On a carpet of crooked pathways carrying oxygen-rich blood to our heart. “I wonder what the silence means?” Inga asks us. Inga is Armenian, long black hair, perfect pale skin, beautifully shaped eyebrows, lips that you can tell are pumped full of filler, revealing a vulnerable piece of her, one that gives her away and makes her less intimidating.

I watch her scribble notes, her giant diamond ring a glittery blur. I love her nails. Naturally long and perfectly manicured. Her hands are soft, like they never once endure scalding hot water and soap, scrubbing pots clean, afterwards leaving your knuckles and skin calloused, raw and dry- ugly even. I had to catch myself. Jennnnn, you presume she never does dishes but why? Because she wears designer shoes and you’ve convinced yourself she is the owner of the matte black G Wagon in the parking lot? That makes you assume she is someone who, without a doubt, owns a dishwasher? Maybe she just protects her hands by wearing yellow rubber gloves like any self respecting person. Maybe she protects her beauty from all that is mundane in life, instead of giving her beauty away to it. I look at my own hands, torn nails, rough dinosaur skin- how easily I gave up on them. 

Sometimes I think Inga is a robot- her responses are so calculated, her face so frozen. Sometimes her statements feel like they were carefully rehearsed beforehand in a classroom and someone is secretly filming her interactions with us- footage that will be showcased in her final dissertation. The evidence that will crown her a doctor. What is undeniable though, is that Inga is smart. 

Whenever Inga addresses me, she turns off her robot voice. She speaks to me as if I were her friend taking the same class in college. I will love Inga forever for this. 

The silence made the room stand still. Just like in life, there are always people in group therapy that will gladly break the silence, and well before it gives anyone else an opportunity to. Either they are scared to sit in it, or eager to please Inga. There are certain people who will blissfuly yap away about themselves and it will have nothing to do with anything, and I can perfectly visualize them in the real world. I can see them in their workplace or at home having dinner with their family. They arent chameleons, they are exactly who they are, no matter the environment they find themselves in. They happily add nothing insightful or profound to the discussion and under a king sized comforter of their yapping, everyone slowly falls asleep. I sometimes start to cringe, but then I notice they arent so why should I? All of this seemingly goes unnoticed by them, the more they contribute the more they are gaining, like they are acquiring all the coins in Mario Kart. I would give anything to be like them. 

There are others who you can tell have entered a sacred space. They take off the mask they wear in public and they become present here as themselves. Its a gift to witness them this way, and I take note. Kel is like this, I can see her in the outside world- charismatic, beautiful, funny, well dressed- charming everyone she encounters in a way that only a confident, loving human can. Everyone falling all over themselves to stand in her light. But here, she strips all that away. Here she sits humbly, eager to learn from all of us, all these depressed people sitting in orange chairs. Here she speaks honestly about herself and how she feels. And to be one of the people that gets to know her in this way- in all her authenticity- it makes me incredibly sad for anyone in the outside world who encounters her while wearing her mask. Kel will break the silence, but in the most beautiful way, in a way that somehow includes us all and the room hangs on her every word. Kel is in a league of her own. 

Then there are the people who remain silent. They sit wound up and uptight as the pressure builds and they refuse to break it. These are the ones I watch closely. The gatekeepers. The emotionally constipated ones. They observe and absorb us all while keeping themselves safely distanced. Never offering any of themselves to us, remaining disconnected. They fade away into the background, detached, a mystery. When I imagine them outside the depressed circle, with their husband or wife or children, they cant possibly be this way. Or can they? These are the ones I focus on. The ghosts I want to know. Or maybe the ghosts I want to save- I dont know. 

“I wonder what is the diagnosis of Autsim?” John says loudly, breaking the silence in the worst way- a way that causes us all to check out instantly. John is maybe one hundred years old, a retired doctor and the voice in the room that always represents the patriarchy of yesteryear. “John, we have moved onto a different topic,” Inga tells him. “A what?!”  he asks, hard of hearing. “A different topic!” Kel and Inga yell at him. 

“We are talking about core beliefs”, Inga repeats. “Where do they come from?” She asks us again. Before John can start talking Cindy begins. “My mother always told me that I couldn’t go anywhere alone,” she says. Always in possession of a Big Slurp drink from 711, Cindy is a gem. She is the perfect balance of yapper and unicorn. “She would always describe all the bad things that could happen to me if I were to go out on my own. To try to protect me I suppose but ultimately just making me afraid of the world, she pauses considering what to say next. “But I wanted to be brave, I didnt want to be scared of life. But bigger than that desire to be brave, was the desire to never betray my mother,” Cindy took a long slurp of her drink. “And to betray my mother would be, we’ll, thats the problem. How do I live the way that makes me happy if it betrays her?”

Inga lights up, she can go somewhere with this. “Cindy, lets think about this. Was there any evidence that you wouldnt be ok if you went somewhere alone?” Cindy ponders this. Sluuuuurp. “No,” she says finally. “So could you say that some of our core beliefs are put there by other people? And we adopt them?” Inga was now going around the room looking at all of us, except John, eagerly. 

So many people speak about their parents in group. There is a woman Janet, who rivals John in days spent alive on this earth, who still suffers from having the condescending, mean voice of her parents in her head, torturing her. As a daughter and now, also a mother, its a grey space I constantly exist in. The desire to please my parents runs so strong, but in my case, Im not sure if that river within me was engineered and built on purpose by them and them alone. It feels more natural, like, of course it exists, why wouldnt it? 

As a mother, I am terrified. What if I make a mistake and I become a negative voice in Noahs head that demeans him in some way? What if one day, when he is one hundred years old, he is still sitting in some plastic orange chair? And worse the alternative-I certainly dont want to coddle him, make him think hes the best thing to ever happen to the human race- he will grow up to be a manboy of the Republican Party. 

It all seems impossible. 

This relationship between a parent and child comes up in every discussion, no matter the prompt- its making me conclude that the relationship you have or dont have with your parents is the most significant one we have in our lifetime because its the foundation that shapes everything else. Its the first complicated, insufferable relationship we endure and it becomes the foundation of all the other complicated, insufferable relationships we collect. Maybe not all of us speak openly about it in a therapists office, but we all carry it around with us as we move through life, even if we try to ignore it, its impossible not to. 

My number one goal of therapy is to never blame anything on my parents. It all seems too easy a scapegoat. Whenever I am asked by Inga, I immediately, without hesitation, preface it all with, “I am lucky, I have great parents.” Because I do. I know that love is the soft white underbelly of any disappointment, any misunderstanding, any hurt feeling, any fallout, the love is always what prevails eventually- because its the thing that matters the most. I choose to love my parents in all their humanness and all their flaws, like they love me in mine. 

But I also have never been afraid to walk in the opposite direction of what theyve wanted for me. I can confidently say I have tested my parents love. And approval or not, the love never was not there. And thats what I mean when I say, I have great parents. 

I say this of course, in an orange chair, in an outpatient program focused on people diagnosed with major depression. We all bring our own guilt and disappointment in ourselves into the room and it hangs over us like a thick fog. On my weakest days, I feel so ashamed, I cant take myself out of it and examine it from the outside. The only solution to either pretend, or to apologize profusely for my existence. If there is a truth brewing, Im unable to tap into it. But I always feel the need to protect my parents. Whatever the cost.

There is a page in my in patient notebook that says “Mom, Dad, none of this is your fault.” It repeats over and over until a full page is filled. If a fight between Francis and my roommate hadnt broken out in the day room, I might have filled an entire notebook with that one sentiment. But I had to surrender my pen and go to my room. 

The more I sit in the orange chair, on the days that are clear, blue skies of clarity, I know that this might be the only reason to fight to stay alive. For others. 

“I wonder, how is Autism treated?” John is back. “John weve moved on!” Kel exclaims, her hands in the air, the only one of us who can tell him what we collectively are thinking in a way that makes him laugh too.