I am an alien. I come in peace.

I’ve heard many writers over the years say that sharing their work with others is like having strangers evaluate their children. Now, I’m not a mother. I don’t have kids that strangers can make snap judgments on or praise. I do, however, have siblings. I’ve heard them get judged. Be it by strangers, friends or boyfriends, the lesson is instantly learned that the fastest way to piss Nicole off is find fault in her brothers.

With that in mind, I am in complete agreement that having my writing evaluated is much the same as having my brothers put on an Olympus-high pedestal. I imagine them surrounded by this human frenzy, just like Brad Pitt would be by the media. The media doesn’t tend to be kind does it? The media, with all their cameras flashes and their screaming questions and their prying impropriety, they put the STORY first and the PERSON second.

I have found that writing groups tend to do the same. For nearly a year now, I’ve been an active member of what we’ll call the P.I. I have workshopped perhaps a dozen times, taking from a myriad of my works and with nearly always the same result. This may ring a familiar bell if you’ve read my past posts, but I am continually accused of the same set of mistakes:

(1) Male characters that are too close to their male best friends.

(2) Male characters that sound too feminine

(3) Male friendships that might as well be gay

(4) Unrealistic family dynamics

Over time, I’ve learned that much of my style and the choices I make in relation to it are due to my upbringing. I was raised atheist. I was raised homeschooled. I was raised by attachment parents. I was raised to be friends with my brothers. These things place me in several minority groups, but put them all together? The way I see it, you can either view a person/author as unique as that as an impossible to read writer OR as a writer with an advantage. Who else out there in that highly competitive literary field is going to have my background? Who else would be able to write tales with characters such as mine, with layers belonging to minority groups that rarely overlap? This is a niche. I have an IN on something that many writers believe to be extinct; an original idea. So what if the dozen times I workshopped with the P.I. I was told my male characters and their relationships were unbelievable and unrelatable? Maybe that was just because it was a style they hadn’t been faced with before. What if everything they saw as off the mark in my novels, they discovered to also be true of me? Siblings that are close enough to be friends? Homeschoolers that are atheists? Parents and their adult children actually WANTING to camp together? Those aliens DO exist. I am one and don’t you dare try and throw my family off that Olympus-high pedestal. We’re happy there with our lightning-bolts and our green antennae. (Have I taken the metaphor too far yet?)

It took me a long time to come to these terms. I kept reading my favorite authors, (Robin Thurman and Sara Reese-Brennan) and not understanding why they had such followings when they did so many of the same things I did. My epiphany started when I looked at the Amazon reviews of those two favorites. Guess what? They were torn down for what I loved them for! They were faulted for their niche, for being the aliens in a sea of regular, just out of the plastic-wrap-humans.

My mother has a thought on why this is. When kids are in school, they are graded, on everything. They don’t get told, “this and this was right. This beginning was good, but this part drags a bit. You might want to build this up a bit, but this right here, THIS is your strength.” No. In school, they got told “this is wrong. That is wrong. Fix it and bring it back. You can do better. You’re miles behind everybody else here.” They were never taught to soften their blows or to sugarcoat because their teachers sure as hell never did. Compliments were few and far between. How many red pens did they see in comparison to gold stars? Could THAT be why I walked away from all my workshops thinking, “wow. I really suck. Maybe I should rethink this writing thing and take up guitar. My mother always said my fingers move like a conductors.” (She has said that) I was homeschooled. There weren’t any stars but the ones we studied in the sky and the only pens were the ones I wrote my first stories with. If you don’t nurture talent and instead just poke at it with your red pens, how is a person expected to try, try and try again? (As the idiom goes?)

Of course, here’s the penultimate question. If you’re a member of a writing group and you want actual help, do you WANT sugarcoating? Do you want the blows softened? Do you want that media hoard to put the STORY first or the AUTHOR first?

Don’t worry. I’m still thinking on that one.

On the verge of deciding this was just how my writing was and that like with Thurman and Brennan, I’d have a smaller following, I decided to try an experiment. I would workshop one more time with P.I. but this time, I’d do it under a male pseudonym. Up until the moment my reviewers all sat down with me to talk, they’d have thought what they read was written by a man. This would help to dispel any suspicion that there was a gender bias, that perhaps many of the issues found in my writing could be attributed to people disbelieving a female could write from a male POV. If you read the opening paragraph to a story and you’ve already seen the author is female, won’t you automatically assume the protagonist will match?

Good news? The experiment worked. They believed in Jacob (the pseudonym chosen for me...and huh, having just finished LOST, that’s funny) and better yet, they thought the main characters were male. There wasn’t any femininity. The main male friendship was believable. Yes, the family dynamic was still alien, (one even said creepy. Creepy? REALLY?) but the goal had been met. The bad news? Everything else sucked. “The premise is good,” I was told. “The base idea is appealing.” But everything else? All the details, world-building, humor, in-jokes, metaphors, pacing, theme? NOTHING WORKED? Really? See, I just find that impossible to believe.

Now, I would never do this, but hell if I’m not tempted. I want to take a chapter from Rob Thurman or Reese-Brennan or Stephen King or hell, even my mother and take it to the P.I. I want to see if they tear it apart, suggesting that perhaps it is not the WRITING that always, always has little to salvage, but the REVIEWERS? Just a thought.

Even with the epiphany that I like the writer I am, I still kept my writing close to the chest. Sure, I read the occasional line to my mother (like zombie heads rolling down a cliffside, chomping at ankles as they went rolling by) and sure, I posted some stories online and got some amazing reviews and finally, yeah, I had some books available on Amazon. I’ve been telling people for the past year, I don’t write to be famous. I obviously don’t write to be popular.  I don’t even advertise. I write for me and because not to, would be like saying I don’t love my family. I’d be betraying myself.

My characters, however, want to be heard. Even without my playing a role, any role really, they’re managing to scream loud enough to get attention. A family friend who lives in Kona, Hawaii, (whom I stayed with) bought my book I Am Not a Hero all by herself and loved it. In fact, it was her very FIRST vampire story. (You know, THAT means something to me) Next, my mom read that very same book of mine and guess what? She was impressed! She would text me at work as she hit different surprises or wondered on different mysteries and then told me she shrieked in the middle of Origins cafe when she hit the major twist! (My mom, queen of figuring out twists, writing-goddess and bookworm-of the universe, SHE was impressed!) Finishing it, she posted my novel to Facebook, causing two OTHERS to buy it! The creator of P.I even invited me to have a profile on the website, calling me one of the groups “most prolific writers.”

Below is a photograph of me at the Oregon Country Fair. This is the first time I ever attempted to sell my book for money. I didn’t invest a lot in it. These are the free copies I got for completing National Novel Writing Month. I threw them down on this blanket, put up little signs and beamed as people came up to browse. In all honesty, just having them LOOK was worth everything. I felt almost like a traveling gypsy displaying her wares to other nomads. Nobody bought one, but alas, selling one was not the point. While I did trade a copy to a lady in exchange for some cool patches, (“sometimes I wrestle with my demons and sometimes we just snuggle”) the moment that really drove the point home was at the booth I was camping behind. It was night. I was sitting out front in a camping chair with the friend I’d come to see. But behind me, behind the curtain, two of the others were reading aloud to each other. One had her head tipped back, the other read from my book. How funny it was (not funny as in funny, but funny as in profound) to hear my words from another’s person’s tongue.

From an Olympus-high pedestal to the ears of others, the voices of my characters are demanding to be heard even without my consent. How does that old idiom go? “Lead your characters, follow them or get the hell out of their way?” Eh, close enough for this alien.

Faith

I know that for an atheist, this might be an odd title. Still, it is fitting.

My parents have more faith in me than I do and according to my mother, its an inherent duty. Its' written into the Parents Guide to Parenting. It still astounds me the depth to which that faith runs. Tonight, it was my dad's faith in me that popped out.

I have been rereading my old Nomadic Nicole blog posts, (the reason which I'll post in an actual post by itself) and I ran across the one where I got to be a Head Cook for an Alaskan day. I have lot's of things to say about that, but the bottom line is that when I was done, my jaw was hanging open. When had I had those balls? Where had that confidence come from? Where the HELL did I find the wherewithal to do THAT?

I needed to talk about it. First, Coryn got to hear the story. Dad and Caspian then heard it over dinner, (mom was working and heard it from a distance) but it was dad who was leaning forward, eyes intent. He heard the whole thing and then-then he started asking me questions.

"When you were in Alaska on the train, did you ever think of being Head Cook?"

Me: "I thought about it before that day I got to be one, but it was a "no way!" But once I had that chance to see what it was like? Then, yeah, I did wonder. Last year, when we nearly had Caspian and me go to Alaska and get jobs with the railroad, I asked myself what I wanted to go back as. I wasn't underage anymore. I could be a bartender or server, but-but what about Head Cook? They're paid more, respected higher, I've probably got the reputation to back it up and I know Jerry would talk me up. So yeah, I've thought about it."

"And what about at Starbucks, could you see yourself being a supervisor? Taking that step UP like you did that way with Luke the Head Cook?"

Me: "Well, I still think they need an assigned trainer, like I mentioned to them."

"What if you wrote up a proposal, sent it into them, very official? What if they said yes? What if they wanted that trainer to be you?"

Me: "But I'm leaving the country."

"But what if you didn't? What if you were a trainer, earned more money, rose up through the company?"

Me: "But I'm leaving the COUNTRY!"

"What if you rose high enough that they sent you out of the country? Sent you to Australia to train people there? What if you CHOSE not to go back to Brisbane the way you'd originally planned?"

Me: .....

He has so much faith in me, it leaves me speechless. He and me literally think I could do anything. They literally would support my pursuit of any dream, though they might caution me, it would never be because they think I am incapable. They think I am capable of everything, the moon, the stars, without limits and my gods, whatever is my brain supposed to do with that? As I go round and round in my thinking circles, doubting what I want until I get it and then knowing without a doubt that IS what I want and vice versa, as I do that over and over again, I come back to that unrelenting parental faith.

They think I can, even when I think I can't.
Who do I want to be right?
I want them to be right.
What if my getting out of my own way is the only thing keeping that from happening?
Maybe I should only be an atheist toward God and not about my parents. Theirs is a good faith. I live on that faith.

The Aragorn Complex

For a long time, I have felt as if I'm peering in through windows which I can't open. I look in on friendships where there's enough trust to show tears and enough closeness to hug away pain. When I went to dinner with my coworker at Buffalo Wild Wings recently, I felt as if I was at another of these windows. My coworkers were laughing and sharing their inside jokes about movies I've never seen and suspect I would never understand. On the train to work, there are strangers who strike up conversations with other strangers, pocketing their ear-buds and making conversational music instead. All of these are windows and though I am used to peering, to wishing, something has changed. Now I am asking myself whether its' actually a case of my not being able to open the window, but rather my not wanting to? After all, how often do I reach for the latch? 

Underneath all of my debilitating intimidation, my overwhelming sense of awkwardness, my constant and incessant striving for control of my environment, lives a desperate desire to conform, to be like others, to be comfortable in my own skin and stop striving to perfect its daily performance. Yet, despite my looking in on these many windows starring people I cannot be or be with, I continue to find myself unchanged. How can it be that I wish so intensely to be different, but I make no efforts to achieve it? Why, instead of reaching for the windows latch, do I eternally choose to remain out in the cold?

Through much contemplation, I believe I have discovered the explanation. I shall use the Lord of the Rings as the means to clarify it.

Imagine, if you will, the Hobbits walking into that tavern where they first meet Aragorn. The four short hairy footed men sit down at a table and start slurping down their grog. They're laughing, telling Shire tales, kicking each other under the table at inappropriate jokes, toasting old victories and squeezing a shoulder to temper age-old pains. They're on the verge of an epic quest, but if you were to look at them, they'd seem nothing more than a group of friends out for a second breakfast.

Now look in the corner and see the man in the cloak. He isn't speaking, isn't moving, keeps his face, and therefore his story, in the shadows. Aragorn looks in on the laughter of the room, the toasting of drinks and the jokes with alcoholic undertows. In the days to come, he'll be part of the Hobbits quest, part of their circle, but he'll still keep his distance. Sure, sometimes he'll stand at the head and lead the way through pain and loss, sometimes theirs and sometimes his, but he'll still keep himself apart. As it was on that first day in that crowded and noisy tavern, Aragorn will always keep part of himself separate. It could even be argued, in fact, that he keeps most of himself buried.

If comparing Aragon to the Hobbits, one must ask; who is happier? Who leads the happier life? It must be the Hobbits of course. Look at their friendship, their willingness to befriend and to trust. They wear their flaws on their sleeves, strip off their shirts to reveal their scars, admit their failures to each other because they know there's no possibility of rejection. Their lives are easier, better, happier than Aragorn's….and here's my point.

Between the Hobbits and Aragorn, who do you find more interesting? Who do you want to know more about? Hell, whose cooler?

I hate to admit it, but there's a part of me that thinks I'm cooler this way. Its' a part that lives down deep, hiding behind my logic where it thinks I'll forget about it and therefore let it live, let it thrive, but I know its' there. It, my Aragorn, thinks its' cooler for being distant, for staying the watcher and not the speaker, for keeping the cloak drawn low over my eyes. I'm more of an interesting character when my story is kept in the shadow. If the price of playing the mysterious, elegant and secretly scarred role is missing out on some laughter, some toasting of mugs, that's got to be reasonable right?

No. It's not and I know that. Its' an unfair trade, but the Aragorn part of me thinks it is and that keeps me from making changes. I keep thinking about Spock and the peacefulness there must be in a Vulcan's logic. I want to be THAT just as much as I know that THAT is wrong. I can't be a whole person and keep my distance at the same time. I can't be happy if I'm always vying to control that happiness, to justify and measure it and then cancel it out if I judge it unfitting. How can I expect to find friends, some of my own Hobbits, when I can't approach a table without a planned excuse of departure already prepped? How can I expect to fall in love when the front I put up is never me, but a fabricated, "head before my heart" me? All my constant distancing, all my facades and my Aragorn cloaks, it has to stop. It has to stop.

I have to find a way to leave my shadowy corner and join those Hobbits at the table. More than just finding a way to burn my Aragorn cloaks, I must find a way to WANT to.

It isn't a case of opening the window.

It is a case of shattering it, climbing through, planting my feet and demanding to be there.  

Lone Cowboy

SNAPSHOTS:

Imagine a campfire in the desert. Next to it, a cowboy is lying on his back with his bedroll folded beneath his head. His hat sits on his chest, which is rising and falling tiredly. He's looking up at stars with grey eyes. Across from him is another cowboy. He's sitting upright, his back braced against a scrawny tree, his own hat hooked on an up-drawn knee, his eyes on the fire.

Neither of them is talking or feeling the desire to do so. They're just sitting, just being, just living.

I cannot fathom this situation. The idea of sitting in the presence of someone who isn't family, of sitting there for a prolonged period, with no escape available? Calling that a nightmare might be too strong a word, but a cage would be closer. It'd be a cage.

Eye Contact:

If I had to be one of these cowboys, I'd be the one sitting up, because you can't make eye contact if you're lying down. Eye contact is polite and if avoided, will be seen as rude. If my friend was facing me, however, then I'd have to time that very eye contact and make sure it didn't go on too long for fear of awkwardness.

Hands:

Every time I shift position on the hard ground, I'm aware of my hands. Do I brace them on my knee, beneath my hat? Do I fold them behind my head and take a break from eye contact to stare at the stars? Do I drag my fingers through the dirt? Do I gather tinder and toss it at the fire? My hands would need to be placed somewhere, a decision that would need to be made and remade each and every time I shifted position.

Talk:

To be in the presence of another person automatically requires the presence of conversational pressure. Questions MUST be asked and answers listened to. Stories must be told and eventually brought back around to a question, so as to provide a segue into the next topic.

Silences:

Silences, like eye contact, must be measured. If they go on too long, they turn awkward. Some of them are natural, pauses as topics shift, but it all depends on the participants. If the other person didn't put in the same amount of effort, conversation would die. More silences would happen and they'd be longer. The pressure on me mounts as I realize that it is totally my responsibility to facilitate the interaction. My body gets tense with the effort of that job and more than that, by there being no end to it in sight.

Emotions:

Everybody fakes emotions in conversations. If somebody says a joke that doesn't strike you as all that funny, you still laugh to be polite. If somebody says something sad, such as their aunt is sick, you say you're sorry even though you don't know their aunt. If somebody is angry over the way they're being treated, you say that you understand their frustration. I take this a step further. I past a smile on my face at all times unless a topic swings towards darker subjects, as this makes me look friendlier. I feign others opinions on movies and books, for this avoids conflict. In my book, a perfect conversation is one that comes and goes without a silence, difference of opinion or misunderstanding. A downside to this is that not only is the grin now involuntary, but my views have become fake. I go into every conversation wearing a mask over my face, my voice and my body.

Hugs:

Physical contact can be comforting and thrilling, depending on the circumstances and relationships involved. A hug from family or a lover is not awkward and does not factor into the following. Any touching outside of this is jarring to me. Hugs are measured in length and are avoided if rudeness won't result from doing so. Being brushed up against, a hand being placed on a shoulder, a brushing of fingers to pass over food at a diner, all of these are startling. I don't invite them and if they occur, I try to breeze past them as quickly and smoothly as possible.

To be the cowboy that sits at that fire, to lounge there without pressure on my body, my face or my emotions seems impossible. The only way that I could be in that situation and not have every muscle in my body taught as a bow string would be if I was staring at the stars alone, devoid of company. Stars and fires are meant to be shared, but until silences can be too, I'll have to stay a lone cowboy. 

If I was Wonder Woman

If Wonder Woman existed, she'd be loved and lusted after. She'd be surrounded by friends, some of them regular folk, some of them heroes like her. She'd have fans that hollered her name and put her poster on their walls. Her powers, her confidence, her beauty, men would want her. They'd be drawn to her certainty, her fierceness, her willingness to stand her ground and do what, in another age, only men were supposed to do.

But if Wonder Woman wasn't a hero, but rather just a regular woman, would those men want her? Or would her confidence scare them off? Would her fierceness, her certainty, drive them away? I think it would.

Super Woman could ask a man to dance and he'd fall onto the floor in his haste to accept. If she was a random pretty face in a random ballroom, he'd dance graciously and then turn a blind eye the remainder of the evening. Wonder Woman could ask a man out in a café and he'd give her his number and call her before she even reached her car. If she was just a woman intrigued, he'd politely take her number and never call. Worse than that, he might text a few times and then fade away. Wonder Woman could spy a man jogging down the street, chase him down and call him "striking" and "handsome" and he'd rush into a dinner invitation. If she was just a stranger, she'd creep him out. He'd bob his head, give thanks and jog into his departure.

I can remember when I was in my mid teens and attending homeschool dances. I got so tired of sitting in chairs, watching the slow songs come and go with a sick weight in my stomach. Guys asked girls to dance, sometimes with words, sometimes with just a proffered hand. I just sat and watched and wished and ached.

And then I'd had enough.

I started asking men to dance. (Okay, they were boys) I'd ask ten in one evening and they'd almost all say yes. We'd dance, chat and then return to our seats. This soon rippled out to affect the rest of my life. If I spied an attractive man in a café, I asked him out. If I saw an attractive man jogging, I chased him down. If my family and I were out to lunch and our server was hot, I flirted and suggested dinner. I was confident. I was sure of myself.

But I wasn't Wonder Woman.

Most of the time, they accepted my number, my dinner invitation, my hand to dance with. There'd be no calls though, no texts, no emails, no further effort following my initial one. Part of me wants to crawl back to my chair and just wait there like everybody else. People keep telling me that love is supposed to find YOU. If you stop searching for it, it'll enter your life all by itself. Friends tell me that I'm going about it all wrong, looking too hard, too intensely, holding my ground too firmly, but WHAT am I supposed to DO? I want to be in love again. I want to sleep curled around somebody whose breathing is better than music. I want to play footsy under the table and be scared of our shared future. I want to be attracted to somebody's subtleties, his wrists and the way his fingers curl into my hair, the way they might one day cradle a baby's head. I want to buy him presents. I want to plan our dates half the time and have that be enough for me, but not too much for him. I want to stop worrying that I'll fall in love before leaving the country, thus cancelling my travels. I want to stop worrying that I'll fall in love overseas and thus barring my coming home.

Am I supposed to be able to find this sitting in a chair, in the corner, waiting for someone to ask me to dance? Would Wonder Woman sit in a chair?

Do I have to be a superhero in order to wield the power of confidence? 

Song lyric prompt

Mumford and Sons

And you rip it from my hands

And you swear it's all gone

And you rip out all I had

Just to say that you've won

Well, now you've won

But I gave you all

I gave you all

I gave you all

I'm sitting on a Greyhound bus and I'm crying as I look out the window. I keep the brim of my white baseball cap pulled low, shadowing my glistening eyes and streaked cheeks. Research may state that tears are a healthy release of tension, but that knowledge doesn't stop me from adopting the Vulcan approach instead.

I press one of my hands against the window, which is cool to the touch due to the rain slashing at its exterior. Pink ear-buds snake into my ears and the lyrics coming from them are of heartbreak and a shredded pride. I am smiling, but it's cracked at the edges. There is a well of sadness in me, there are even flickers of failure, but there's a blanket of relief thrown over both of these, which keeps me from drowning in it.

The bus has a hundred seats. Almost all of them are occupied by people and yet I feel as if I am in a bubble. Curling towards the window, away from the empty seat next to me, away from the aisle beyond it, I feel the most alone I have in two months.

And it was bliss.

I think about the hostel waiting for me in another city, about the bed behind a door that locks, about a toilet that flushes and a shower that isn't timed. It doesn't matter that I'll be sharing the space with other travelers. It doesn't matter to me that the room, the bathroom and the kitchen will all be communal. All that I am heading toward must be better than what I am leaving behind. It has to be or the hope that I've been clinging to these past two months will let me down. I can't be let down again, not after having already failed myself.

I came here imbued with such hope. I can still remember going camping with my folks in our green Volkswagen bus back in Oregon. My mother had been reading aloud a letter from an Australian friend, when all of a sudden, she let out a cry! She threw her hands in the air, got out of the bus and hugged me.

"She wants you to come stay with her in Australia!" My mom yelled, a grin leaping onto her face. "She wants you to come live with them in the woods, nanny their three year old while they build their new house. They'll take you all over the country, to the markets; she even wants to introduce you to men!"

That moment of realization was still so clear to me, that exhilaration. The months following that life-altering letter were like lightening, there and gone again. My dream was coming true. Not only was I traveling, a dream bound in my bones, but I'd be going the one place I'd always secreted wanted to go. More than that, I'd be paid to be there. What more could I want?

Gently, I thumped my fist against the glass. It was my only acknowledgement of an anger I wouldn't permit myself to feel. It was always better to experience shame than anger, as the first was easier to conceal and keep from becoming a public spectacle. I had always despised public spectacles.

Yesterday, for the first time in my 23 years, I had been angry enough to punch something. Looking now at the ring on my finger, which sports a Shakespearean quote, I can recall how it had bit into my skin on impact with the ground. I'd used the excuse of an upset stomach to escape from the house and the family I'd been staying with. I went out to the restroom, which consisted of nothing more than a tent. Inside, there was a crate and a hole in the ground below it. I had knelt down outside the hut, drove my knuckles into the soil and then cursed colorfully. From the physical violence to the verbal one, that was entirely unlike me. I had buried these instantly, used the tent and gone back inside to the family I was 24 hours away from leaving forever.

And you rip it from my hands

And you swear it's all gone

And you rip out all I had

Just to say that you've won

Well, now you've won

I feel like I've lost a battle, as if I threw down my spear and sank to my knees in surrender. I feel like a coward because I can't stop looking back on my being in Alaska, when I worked on a train beneath a boss that barked at me like a sergeant at her marines. She would get up in my face and scream. She'd been shorter than me, but her unreasonable and immovable cruelty still towered over me. I'd wanted to stand up to her, but I'd been afraid she'd strike me. In the end, as it always was, I'd played the noble note. I'd found a way out, shook her hand, grinned as if I'd been the one to win and then walked out.

I'd lost this one. I'd lasted three months, endured the child that screamed and hit me and sent my glasses flying. I'd tried to hold that little girl close and tell her I was sorry she couldn’t see her parents, the very same parents who had given their child to a nanny for eight hours a day, every day. She wouldn't let me hold her thought, wouldn't let me touch her, crying "don't look at me!" if I looked right at her. The only time I ever held her was when she found a spider in her room. She called my name, "Nicole! Nicole! SPIDER!" I'd run in, swung her into my arms and then into the other room. I plopped her onto my bed, which sat in the middle of the privacy-lacking kitchen. She immediately began shoving at me, slapping, hitting, sobbing for me to LET GO. Staring at her, I'd tried to understand what I was doing wrong.

"Why can't you trust me?" I wanted to ask. "Why can't we get past this? I've been here for two months, two months! I've played marbles with you, read the same dinosaur book to you over and over again, pushed you on the swing and sung London Bridge is Falling down a million times. I wanted us to be friends." I didn't say anything though. She was three. She wouldn't understand my questions, just as she couldn't understand why she'd been yanked out of daycare to spend eight hours every day trapped with a stranger. Knowing this, I wish there was somebody I could ask, but there was no one. I spent every night asking questions of the stars over their shed, but stars aren't known for their wisdom.

So I gave up. Those were the words that kept ringing through my mind, not that I was heading into the city for a different adventure, not that I'd done my best or that they were just as at fault. I had given up. I hadn't been patient enough to deal with a lonely child. I hadn't been understanding enough of parenting methods far tougher than those I'd been raised with. I hadn't been enduring enough to sleep in a bed in the kitchen, to use internet that failed every time it rained, to only being able to read when the solar panels had seen plenty of sun, to only using a shower for five minutes, to using a toilet spiders made their houses in and centipedes slept under, to living with two adults who let their child cry herself to sleep and showed so little interest in me, that I felt as much an intruder as their daughter already treated me. I hadn't been ENOUGH. They'd won.

But I gave you all

I gave you all

I gave you all

But I had done my best. I had given my everything, more than I'd given that boss of mine in the Land of the Midnight Sun, more than I'd given anything that had tried to break me. I had given my all and that that had to be enough. It didn't mean I'd won, but it had to be enough.

The window glistens with rain as we leave the city behind and head towards another. The hat is still pulled low over my face, but the brims not hiding tears anymore. It's hiding my grin.

I had given my all and that was enough.

It Began with Shampoo

So how did you two meet? (Prompt) (The latest prompt for Stunt Writing was to write, for 25 minutes, about your first meeting with someone. It could be anyone in your life. I chose Mimi)

When I first walked into Camp Firwood for homeschooled youth, I brought with me the same thoughts I brought every new place I visited. I had expectations of awkward meetings with new people, awkward silences, not knowing where to go, how to introduce myself, how to connect and bond. I brought all of that imbedded in the chip on my shoulder, even though my perpetual poker face rendered that chip invisible.

Things went wrong almost immediately.

A bottle of shampoo had burst inside my bag, covering all of my belongings in slimy goo. I spent an hour in the bathroom, trying to clean it out. That's when I met her for the first time. Looking back, I have no idea what we first said. I was in front of the mirror, my duffle bag in the sink on my right, all of my clothes on my left. I was rinsing it out and concealing my unhappiness at the same time. My face had been drawn into frustrated lines before her arrival, but now it was a careful blank. Of course, I was little more than 13 at the time. I might be remembering wrongly how perfected my mask was at that point in time. I only recall that the effort to keep it in place was there.

I won't call her by her real name here, so I'll just refer to her by her old nickname Mimi. Mimi and I became inseparable instantly, something that had only happened to me two others times. The camp lasted less than a week, but she and I were never more than four steps apart. We slept in the same cabin and discussed how great a prank it would be to block the entrance to another cabin with duct tape so they couldn't get out in the morning. She spoke of it as if she'd actually do it, whereas I was only joking and pointed out, all too logically, how impossible it would be to use duct tape without waking everyone up within a mile radius. (Yes, I would have used that word even at that age. I was known for my eloquence)

Mimi was two years younger than me and had a black cast on her leg, which went up past her knee. It never slowed her down. I was the more outdoorsy of the two of us, wearing a cowboy hat everywhere I went, but she had a wild child in her too. We went kayaking every day, though always in separate boats. We both liked to control our own speed and after all, races were impossible if you were both in the same craft. We spent whole afternoons kayaking around the island next to Firwood, getting so excited about the harsh waves and then thrilling at the gentle lull on the way back. It got to the point that when we guided the boats into the water, her cast making a scuffing noise in the sand, we could just glance at the waves and KNOW what they'd be like when we hit them.

There was a man, a counselor, whom we both followed after like puppies. His nickname was Coyote. He was an adult, married, had kids, but I didn't care. I was thirteen and a bit enamored. He called me Scout, gave me a spoon he'd carved and burnt into shape himself which smelled of scorched cedar and on my last day, he got me up to watch the sunrise over the water. Mimi had attended Firwood for years before me, had been his "Scout" before I had, though she hadn't owned the nickname. If there was any jealousy though, I never saw it. She also never showed any inclination towards the poker face I sported, so I doubted there was any jealousy at all.

Jealousy wouldn't come until years later, when we were late in our teens and love sliced us apart.

When Mimi and I weren't kayaking, we were going on Coon Walks with Coyote. This meant that a counselor would lead a single file line of campers out into the woods. There weren't any hiking trails out there, no paths at all. We could only stay together by listening to the person ahead and behind. If you listened to the commentary during one of our Coon Walks, this is what you'd hear:

"ROCK!" The leader, Coyote would call from the front.

"ROCK!" The next person in line would repeat, who then passed the message on down the row. In response, each person would step around the rock they couldn't see.

"STOP!" Coyote would eventually yell.

"STOP!" The second in line would intone. We would all then stop smoothly, like a squad of marines.

"SOUND OFF!" Coyote would command, causing us to each call out a number in turn, confirming that everyone was present, that the number we called out at the beginning was the same number we finished with.

Mimi and I thrilled in these nighttime adventures. Sometimes, we even got to lead. I remember a particular time when I was just behind Coyote and all of a sudden, he was gone. He was there, calling out "rocks" and "stops" and "sound off's" and then-nothing. I slapped the leaders cap on my head without hesitation and was unbelievably glad, although secretly, that Mimi was right behind me. I immediately did a sound off and realized we had everybody except the man who was supposed to be leading. We continued onwards, both because I didn't know the way back at that point and also because I didn't want the adventure to end. I liked the leaders cap. I'd like it more in the years to come.

It wasn't seconds after we were moving again, when I heard a coyote howl that was unmistakably the man named coyote rather than the creature. I stopped us, did a count again and realized that he'd now stolen somebody. He was testing me! No, he was testing us. With Mimi and me, almost up until the very end, we were always a "we."

Coyote stole half the group before he returned to the head of our line and led us back. Stumbling back into the light of camp, my untouched flashlight in my pocket, Mimi's totally dead one in her backpack, we grinned like fools, as if we'd actually gotten high on the dark air.

In the night, it was Coon Walks. In the afternoons, we hit the waves. In the mornings, Mimi and I would play four-square. We called her the Cherry Bomb Queen for her incredible moves, though I don't recall ever getting a nickname myself from the game.

I will always find it uncanny that while I cannot remember what she first said to me on that first day of camp, I can remember what we did on the last night. We were lying on our stomachs in the top bunks in our cabin. I had a journal in my hand that was sparkly green/blue. Everyone else was asleep. We passed this journal back and forth; she wrote about her relationship with her grandma, I wrote about slipping down the side of a hill and how Coyote pulled me back up.

I still have this journal in my room. I don't cry over it anymore. I still miss her, but its' just an ache now. If I close my eyes, I can still see her cast, her cherry bombs, her foolish grin mirroring mine. I can still feel her hand on my shoulder as we stumble through the dark to the tune of a coyote's howl.

It doesn't matter where we ended.

We began with a bag full of shampoo.