Chameleon

Content Warning: Substance abuse (alcohol), corporal punishment (spanking)

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The trees look safe.

She sees trees as far as the eye can see from the other side of the glass, when she is in her home, and when she is in the car to drive to a place she doesn’t want to be. They look safe, more than the walls and roof that guard her bed, her mom, her dad, her brother. The trees look like a place she can hide in. A place she can play with joy. A place where she can be her. There’s no care for the big homes of pride — although they remind her of what she lacks —no care for the posh dress and tights, and she doesn’t want the yells and spanks to keep her scared. She doesn’t want to be told who to be or what to do. She wants to be her.

But she has to change each day, to act and be what each one wants her to be. She has to change who she is, be a different shade of a false her to meet each view.

This place is one for chameleons. Or, at least, she has to be one to survive.

She has to change her color for each expectation. By day, she has to please others to be safe. By night, she has to be good and quiet to be safe.

In her walls are bottles that scare and taunt. They have a foul drink in them. They cause the yells and spanks. They cause the fear for her and her brother. They cause the fights her parents have.

But if she is quiet, some nights she can’t be found. If she is good and quiet, she is left alone with her thoughts and dreams. It is the best way, the only way, to hide in this place. The trees are too far to run to. And if they weren’t, she wouldn’t know what to do. She may want to hide, but she doesn’t want to be alone.

She still wants to be loved. And that’s why she stays.

But she has to play the chameleon that hides who she is for that love.

Does it have to be that way?

Is the rest of the world, where the trees are, this way?

If she wants to live and be safe, it has to be this way. Even if she doesn’t want it to be.

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Child, today you have to wear black.

It is proper. It is elegant. It is maturity. No one cares of your young age. You must act how they want to survive.

A proper lady does not bounce or kick her legs in the air while she’s seated.

A proper lady wears those dresses and tights you so despise. Get over it.

A proper lady walks, never runs. Sits still, never plays.

But I don’t want to go! It’s so boring. They don’t let me do anything. I don’t like this dress. I don’t like these tights!

Don’t whine, child. A lady doesn’t whine.

But I don’t want to act like a lady!

Then they don’t love you, and you don’t survive. Are we understood?

… Yes.

Yes, what?

Yes, Ma’am.

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Today my color is blue.

Mom and dad. Their yells are like the door isn’t shut, but my brother and I have it so. To block us from the noise. To block us from what makes us scared. As if the door could help us. It never does though.

Blue is the color to hide with our things. To blend with the walls and under the bed. Maybe today they won’t find us. Maybe they will fight, they will stop, and the day will go on. Maybe we can keep playing, but quietly. To ourselves. If we are quiet and stay good, maybe their yells won’t catch us.

We don’t know why we get yelled at, or spanked. We can’t tell what we do that starts it. Some days we are all together. Happy. But some days, most days, he drinks that foul drink. Happy becomes scared and we don’t know why. Like a new him is there instead, and we have to hide. We turn blue and hide with our things so we can’t be found. It’s worked.

So now most of our days are blue. Just so we can hide with our things and not be seen. If we stay away, if we aren’t seen, then we’re not scared, and there’s no hurt. It’s a smart new plan. I think.

If we are left alone, playing as quiet and good, like they don’t know we’re here, then we are safe. We don’t do or say things around them so we don’t get scared. So we stay blue. Alone. This is the new happy.

But I don’t want to be alone either. I am making them happy by being quiet and good. Right? And making all of them happy means I’m loved and not alone. Right?

Then why am I alone?

This doesn’t make sense. I don’t want to be alone.

I want to be loved.

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She drifts through the home of the trees; her steps a slow, delicate pace, as if she floats above the foliage that dusts the earth in color. She is older, wiser, experienced.

And yet still, she feels the same pain in her heart.

Her power of a chameleon has failed her, and for what reason she cannot parse.

Her colors expanded from black and blue to green, a color to be the one that always nods and does as asked when tasks arrive to her desk, and purple, the color adopted when rest was no option and “hustle” was the only way to thrive.

This was the way, was it not? To survive? To morph with new colors in order to adapt to the needs of others?

It was not.

Her days of green produced remarks of high regard from peers. But her loyalty was not enough to keep her safe from a monster so infatuated with wealth. It found her at her desk and tossed her out like carnage to be cleaned up without care.

Her loyalty would never be enough for it, no matter how she craved to fit in the same world it lived by.

The days colored in purple fared no better. She fell to outside influence, instructing her their own meanings of material worth and success, without considering the impact made on her health; physically and internally. Still, she was told to continue on, and on, and on…

Until she ran. Until she escaped to the trees.

And here she falls, crunching the colorful growth beneath her knees as her head shot back to face the sky. To face the trees with warm streaks down her face and wail.

I’ve tried everything!

But the trees remain still. These guardians she had watched from afar for so long, that she now escaped to when all else was lost. That she risked her horrid fear of loneliness to venture out and finally meet.

And only silence is the answer provided for her.

Do you really have nothing to say to me? After all this time!

Only silence.

I am alone! And I don’t want to be alone!

The gentleness of a breeze whisks between the green. The trees shift at the touch with a quiet rustle. But still, only silence.

She cowers. Her arms hold herself as she trembles against the earth, forehead kissing the dirt.

Please, I don’t want to be alone. I don’t want to be left behind.

Her final plea meets more silence. And she surrenders. It teems over her like a heavy blanket.

She awaits for the blanket to smother her. Suffocate her.

Instead, it comforts. Instead, she finds herself listening to the silence.

And listen. And listen.

For the first time, the noise of the world she knows is gone. A world that, when she returns to it, will never drown her with noise again.

Because the clarity of the silence with the trees is the loudest thing she has ever heard.

Making them happy does not mean I am loved.

Another breeze sweeps through, causing her to raise herself from the earth. Her face and hair catch in the elegant dance of the wind.

The last thing I’ve tried is doing what makes me happy.

The last thing I’ve tried is finding my own color.

Her chest swells. Her heart ignites. Lips quiver with more streaks down her face.

The last thing I’ve tried is finding love through loving myself.

Still she trembles, but she stands. Slowly. She raises her face to the sky once more, and stares at the strip of golden light gleaming through the trees.

The trees. Her powerful, silent guardians.

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I am now yellow.

Yellow like the sun who warms all with her light, and shines without fear of being snuffed. Yellow like the pure bliss of a child at play. Yellow like the freedom of loving and being loved without shame.

My color is yellow. My true color is yellow. And my days will always and forever be yellow.