How to Love Claire Mason

Hi, I'm Claire

My bare face stares back at me in the bathroom's blurry mirror. My eyelashes appear stubby, framing my tired, mud-colored eyes, my eyelids are peppered with stray eyebrow hairs, and my skin is pale and blotchy. It's a face you'd take a while to get used to if you had to wake up to it each morning, but it could be done. Someone, someday, could accept my dull eyes and flawed skin, even if I am only just beginning to. Someday I could wake up this way and be unapologetic. But not now.

My mother didn't think to bring mascara, eyeliner, or foundation for me to hide behind. She only brought me clothes, shoes, books, a hairbrush, and toiletries. The necessities. The hairbrush will have to do. I brush the sleep-made tangles from my long, dirty-blonde hair, wincing a bit at the sharp pain in my scalp the brushing creates. The least I can do is look like I tried to appear presentable. I don't really expect the other patients to do much primping. We are here to transform our tiny, breakable, porcelain doll bodies back into real boy and real girl bodies, not paint our faces and strive to look attractive.

Once the tangles are out and my teeth are brushed, I decide that, without make up or tweezers, my face cannot be helped. I change into a baggy pair of sweats and an oversized T-shirt from a 5K I ran last year, and slip on some flip flops. My outfit hides everything but my forearms, hands, and feet. The rest doesn't need to be defined; I know that, on my third day here, my body is still sickly. It wouldn't do any good to show the others tangible proof of my failed recovery.

I plop back onto my bed and wait for the kindly nurse to return and wheel me to the multipurpose room. A part of me yearns to stretch my legs, to walk the short distance down the hall and not worry about my heart rate falling. But I am a prisoner in my own body; it will not safely allow me the simple freedom of walking anymore. I wish i had known that before I collapsed.

Finally, the nurse arrives pushing a wheelchair, and in the morning light that streams through the window, I can see her name badge. It reads MONIQUE and has a tiny picture of her smiling face. She grins. "Good morning, Claire. Ready to go?"

I get up slowly, in case the dizziness suddenly returns, and sit in the chair.

The cliche, "here goes nothing" couldn't be more suitable, I think as she wheels me down the silent hallway. I smooth the bottom of my T-shirt with my hands, as if it's a gorgeous dress and I'm on my way to a dance. Nervous habit, I guess.

The wheelchair takes a sharp turn and I'm suddenly in the doorway of the multipurpose room. The giant round table is still the center of the room, the cabinets are still orange with peeling paint, and the chairs are still brown folding chairs with little padding. Nothing has changed, except there's a girl seated at the far end of the table, chatting with a nurse. She's wearing a blue, obviously hand-knit beanie, a purple bathrobe, and pink pajamas. Her light brown hair is thin,wispy, and tangled. Her eyes are sea-glass blue and very round, and her skin is several shades paler than my own. I speculate that she is about eleven.

I slowly get out of the wheelchair and sit cautiously in a folding chair. Monique pats my shoulder, we exchange smiles, and she leaves. The girl hasn't acknowledged me yet, for she is still talking, quite rapidly, to the nurse beside her. I can't help but hear her: "So I came all the way here. They don't have places like this back home, and I sure as hell wouldn't have gotten help back in Missouri. It's. ..it's just so much harder, having alcoholism on top of all this.."

An eleven year-old with alcoholism? What kind of place is this? I thought to myself, horrified by this new information. I listen on:

"I mean, I'm twenty-one. No one can tell me what to do. It's all up to me.But I know I have to be here. I can't go on like this." The nurse nods. "I'm proud of you, Annie, " she says softly before getting up and going to the fridge in the back corner.