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. 

Thinking in Circles

It has recently become clear to me that I think in circles.

Let me start with a small example before I move onto the major topic that's taking up noisy residence in my brain.

Last week, I was at the Origins Café with my parents. I spied a very attractive gentleman sitting at a nearby table. He was in a suit, with a laptop and a bagel. He had short hair, a short beard and looked to be mid-twenties. Seeing a hot man in Origins was not unusual.  My pointing him out to them and all of us sighing was just as normal. If this was one of those normal days, I'd just smile, enjoy my latte with honey and go home. But this was action week of my stunt, so I couldn't have that.

So I asked him out via a note after chatting him up. (And no, my parents weren't watching. They'd gone on errands so I could have "space") Go ahead, congratulate me if you will for taking the initiative, but it isn't all that impressive. I got fed up with waiting for men to ask me out a VERY long time ago. I've done the asking for years, the leaving my number, the asking to dance, etc. The nitty-gritty of it is that this guy and I chatted, I gave him my number, he texted me and-well, let me stop there for a moment. No spoilers.

I want to tell you my thought process starting from when I saw him until the moment I walked out after leaving my number.

That guy is hot. I wish I could spend some time with him.                                        

Okay, my parents have left so I can talk to him.

I'm sitting next to him! Wahoo! Let's start a conversation. How do I do that? I should leave him a note…but how will he remember who I am? I know! I'll ask him how to spell a really long word. (I did not realize how difficult this was. I know how to spell most any word. The only one I could think of was "superfluous," and I was pretty sure I could spell that. So I came up with one that the barista working Origins had asked us last week, Entrepreneurial)

Okay, he had to look it up and now he's used it to start a conversation! Yeah! The men don’t' usually do that on their own!

You know, he's kind of talky. He's good looking though, one of the most good-looking I've asked out really.

He hasn't asked me anything. I'm kind of bored-no. I can't be bored. I put effort into this!

This has turned awkward. Maybe I shouldn't have come over here. Maybe he isn't as good looking as I thought. You know, I'm hoping to go to Oz. I shouldn't be pursuing a guy.

I wish I wasn't here. 

See how my thinking goes in circles? I started out being excited, then got him and through no fault of his own, (he actually put in more effort than most) I decided I wished I hadn't acted. The fact that we then went on a date together and it went TERRIBLY doesn't change anything. That's a "superfluous" detail.

I am doing these mental circles about Australia. This is how my thinking has gone in the past six months:

I miss my friends. I wish I could go back one day, but no, I want to settle down.

I've been home over a year and can't find a husband. I wish I could go back to Oz, but no. I haven't tried hard enough!

(My parents, after hearing my mention how much my Ozzie's are in contact with me, ask about my going back)

I want that so much, it aches. I don't listen to Mumford and Sons, because that reminds me of being there. I want to settle down, but it hasn't worked.

Maybe I should do some research on plane ticket prices and visas.

Wow, it'd be really expensive.

(Parents are really supportive of the notion that the money is possible)

I work at a coffee shop. Maybe I could work at a coffee shop. I'll contact my friend who knows people who at work at Ozzie coffee places.

Oh my god! They tentatively offered me job on arrival! I can't believe it! I think its' time to tell my friends I'm trying to come back…wait, what if they're not excited as I am? Oh well. They've been awesome so far.

I might be misremembering. What if I've colored them to be more awesome than they were? What if I get there and I feel I don't belong? That I've been gone too long? What if I come home and that permanently colors my friendships with them?

Which is better, not going and always missing them, wondering how it'd have been if I went…or go and risk it not being as great as I'm hoping? Maybe it's better not to take the risk.

What if I fall in love there? If he wants to stay there, I'll be apart from my family. If I stay there, my family would come, but they'd have to sell SO much of their things. Would I want to put that pressure on them?

Maybe I should just go back to searching for a husband.

How long have I been doing this, taking things I want and then twisting them around until I rethink my wanting them at all? I know I go into dates thinking like this. I go into friendships like this, I know I go into jobs like this and apparently, I somewhat do this for travel as well. Mental circles, also known as over-thinking and what-if's, they warp my views of things and detract from my happiness. This ties right into my expecting the worst of things instead of the best of things, ALL the time. (And yes, that was a sort of, kind of attempt at a literary joke) Thinking about Oz, I decided I need somebody with an outside view of this, but who knows me. So, of course, I went to my mom.

I asked her questions about my having fun there, how I sounded, what I enjoyed, what SHE saw vs. what I've said since my return. She says what I was happy, did have fun and that my friends have done nothing but support the notion they like me since I've been gone. "Go," She said. "We regret the things we don't do, not the things we do."

I think that until I learn a way to sidestep my what if's, I'll need to make use of outside viewpoints. Thanks mom. 

Being Seen as Vulnerable

Being Seen

Recently, my mom told me about an article she read about suppressing emotions. In our society, expressing ourselves by crying, yelling, even intense displays of affection or dancing in a circle because we're overjoyed are all viewed as inappropriate. Tears make you a wimp or a weak. Children should be shielded from PDA. Yelling matches should be kept behind closed doors. Happy dances of joy make you a weirdo.

According to my mother, the article went onto describe Spock from Star Trek. As a Vulcan, he is trained to suppress all emotions so that logic can prevail, even dominate. Research suggests, however, that without emotion, logic is inhibited, almost impossible. Spock would likely stay in his quarters and be unable to choose which pair of shoes to wear with his uniform, let alone provide the captain with invaluable advice.

Between Spock and what I saw in the Ted Talk, a thought occurred to me. Society perceives vulnerability as a weakness. Apparently, there's this idea that those who DO show emotion, who LET themselves be seen as vulnerable, are happier.

I cannot fathom being seen as vulnerable, let alone letting that happen VOLUNTARILY.

Let me explain.

If I am out with a friend and I ate too much at lunch, therefore I feel a stomachache setting in, I will call home. I will request my mom to come up with a lie, a reason she needs me to come home.

If I have a cold, I don't want to be seen by ANYONE. I don't want to go to coffee, go shopping, go down the block or go to work. I despise blowing my nose in front of other people. I want to hide my face if my eyes are burning, so people won't see. During something as simple as cold, I want to hide in my room and wait until it's over. (With perhaps the exception of my mother and father, who is the only one I allow to see me like this)

If I get hurt, (drop something on my foot, slip and hit the ground, gash my hand, hit my head, something causes me pain) my first desire-no, my first reflex is to say 'I'M FINE! I'm GOOD! There's no problem here!" I don't want to be seen in pain, any pain.

Shockingly, this even applies to happiness. If I'm out with somebody and having a ridiculously good time, I'm going to temper it, rein it in. What if I pressure them to have a better time than they're actually having? What if they see my joy and are made uncomfortable by it? What if I scare them off? Its' best I keep my keep my "fun" at a medium until I know how their "good time" compares to my" ridiculously good time."

In all of these situations, I am vulnerable and it downright terrifies me. The moment I feel outside my comfort zone, I want to escape. This doesn't even have to mean leaving the situation physically. It all too often means I slap a mask on, a "no, I'm not sick/no, I'm not in pain/no, I'm not nervous/no, I'm not overwhelmingly happy" mask.

So as I said, I cannot fathom LETTING myself be seen as vulnerable. I know that isn't healthy and that research is showing the tempering or burying of emotions is known to affect happy emotions too. This hasn't stopped me before.

I guess for now, I'll go to Spock's quarters and join him in the decision making process of shoes and uniforms. 

You are a-changing.

I was at work yesterday in the airport. I was on bar (which means making coffee) and it was pretty quiet. Nobody coming. Nobody going. No beans a-grinding.

Then this lady comes in. She's blond, pretty, almost model-type looks and she's upset. She's so choked up, she can barely speak. She's looking through her purse for her wallet so she can pay for her two shots of espresso and her hands are shaking. She finally locates it, pays the cashier and comes around to my side.

When I hand her the drink, all I want in the world is to hug her. I don't know if she'd return it. I don't know if she wants it or if she views embraces the same way I do, as infinitely awkward. I don't reach out, however, and not just because there's a counter between us. There's a barrier inside me too. It keeps me from reaching out and even when I wish to be held, it keeps me from asking.

If you'd walked up to me a year ago and started crying, I'd have been running away so fast, you'd have whiplash. Of courses, I wouldn't be RUNNING. I'm a woman of elegant departures. I find polite reasons to vanish, smooth excuses. Tears are a weakness. I don't like this view. I tell other people it isn't true. I lie to myself that it isn't what I believe, but my crying and others crying is weakness. Now weakness can be beautiful, unveiling a weakness can be an investing of trust. If my mother cried near me, I'd ache for her, but I'd also feel incredibly grateful that she trusted me enough to share that part of her with me. In me, however, tears always feel like letting something through a mask that shouldn't be let through.

If I'd been in this job last year and she'd walked up to me, I'd have said nothing. I'd have just done my job and gone on with life. If I was where I wanted to be in life, I'd have had the ability to go over and hug her or at least offer her that option. As it was, I compromised.

"Here's that double shot of espresso," I pass it to her. "And whatever is going on, I am so, so sorry."

I know this doesn't seem like much to other people, that it pretty was barely a blip on her radar right then, but to me, it was a soaring difference.

Nicole, you are a-changing.

Train Station Peanuts

This was something that happened a week ago at the 99th Transit Center. I was coming home from work the night before I started staying at the hotel with HOST. (Due to the incredible winter weather that shut down most of Portland) It was cold. It was bitingly cold. And apparently that threw some sort of switch in my brain. (Perhaps that was sort of prophetic of things to come?) 

____________

The wind was fierce and the snow had the habit of sneaking inside my coat, but it was the cold that waged the worst battle. My hands dug deep into my pockets, my chin dipped low into the fuzziness of my grey scarf, I tried to shield myself from the most brutal of Mother Nature's beating. The train station was crowded despite the late evening hour and yet it still somehow managed to feel deserted. We were all of us islands, withdrawing as deeply as we could within our layers and ourselves. Why waste warm air on words? Why chill your fingers for the sake of a handshake? Better to conserve body heat at the expense of interaction.

When I made out with a guy for the first time at sixteen, seven minutes felt like hours. It was a planned event of course, as all momentous occasions were for me. When I went swimming off the coast of an Australian island, I wanted those seven minutes to stretch as far as my breaststroke could make them.

Standing at that train stop that evening, however, seven minutes felt like a pool fit for drowning in. If there'd been a wall not covered in a fine sheeting of ice, I'd have banged my head against it. If there'd been a shelter available that didn’t sport a row of icicles overhead that more resembled magical daggers, I'd be elbowing others clear enough for a spot.

Okay, those were all lies. I wouldn't have banged my head against a wall or elbowed other people, because I was not the type of woman to make a scene. That premeditated make out session at sweet sixteen had been at home, on my couch, during a movie of people getting lost in space. That dive down under had been a rare abandonment of caution, as I had heard jellyfish called blue bottles were known to be seen in the water. I was not a woman of public displays, of scenes. This did not mean I did not seek adventure. It only meant that those adventures were planned and pursued alone, as company added variables and variables meant spontaneity and I could not suffer spontaneity. I could, however, suffer the cold.

An ETA of seven minutes was posted everywhere, on the digital schedule posted overhead, on the high tech phones of the people who loved their gadgets, on the watches of the people that didn't. As seconds passed, feet stomped the ground to stay warm, hats were continuously yanked down over ears and cell phones and watches alike were peeked at too often.

And what was I doing? What I always did and that was doing everything I could to be my own island. I kept my eyes averted, kept my body turned aside from the direction of others, made certain to only check the overhead timetables when others weren't. All of these efforts made so that others wouldn't engage me in a conversation, because conversation meant automatic awkwardness when I had to navigate its conclusion.

But that evening, after an eight hour shift serving coffee at an international airport, I wasn't being a very attentive island. My body was twisted towards the street and the oncoming wind, because getting slapped in the face with ice sharp as shards of a shattered windshield was better than being drawn into a conversational entrapment.

"Hey," A female voice said suddenly and because it was human reflex to do so, I turned towards the source. "Would you like some chocolate covered peanuts?"

"Sure. Thank you." I held out a hand gloved in neon aqua. I popped back the chocolate and the burst of sweetness must have made my marbles explode like firecrackers, because not only did I not move away, but I also made no attempt to fill the quiet my acceptance of candy had caused.

"They say the rails are freezing over," The woman with salty hair offered the peanuts to another man standing with us who was older than she. "By tomorrow morning, there won't be any trains running at all."

"I'm here from the coast," The man shook his head at the chocolate in the yellow bag. "I was supposed to take a bus back, but none of those are going anywhere either. I'm lucky I've got family here in Portland."

They're talking, having a conversation, a random, in the middle of nowhere, for no reason chit chat. Uh oh. How did I end up standing here? I should be over by the pillar with the maps posted on all four of its sides.

"I'll bet the weather out on the coast is worse than it is here, being closer to the water and all. You should probably count yourself lucky you got stuck here, bus or no bus." Holy crap, now I was participating!

"At least a bus would be warmer than standing here waiting for a train." That was another guy; somebody wearing four puffy coats and three rolling suitcases at his feet. I tried to imagine him linking them together and pulling them through the airport. Considering the flowers all over two of them and the peace signs adorning the third, I waged a good guess that not all the luggage was his.

"Well hell," I smiled despite there being no pressure to do so, despite the public lighting being too weak to illuminate it. "A doghouse on Christmas morning would be warmer and that's without the dog."

They laughed, even though I used a dry voice and the wind was so harsh at our backs, it tried to steal my humor. They laughed little laughs into their collars, their scarves, the top buttons of their fleece lined coats. I smiled inside, though tentatively, still waiting for the awkwardness to set in and drive me towards the escape route I always kept at the ready.

And indeed, silence snuck in at the tail end of our laughter and my insides tightened, then eased. Maybe it was the cold roaring in our ears such that it wasn't a complete quiet. Maybe it the unceasing battle Mother Nature was waging on the rails and us, but in that moment, the four of us were an island unto ourselves. I didn't know why they were standing with me and frankly, I was at an utter loss as to why I was standing with them. My voluntarily remaining in a circle that wasn't talking was as likely as my telling a handsome customer at work that if he didn't go out with me, he'd be getting a hot medium roast coffee in the face.

I stayed rooted to my spot until my train finally came. As it pulled into the station and I gathered together my bag and sadly empty coffee cup, I bid them goodbye with a wave and a thank you. We didn't know each others names and we didn't know where each other was going. We'd wasted warm air on words, but performed no handshakes. Climbing the stairs into the train car, I wondered what had made tonight's silence safe enough to house me.

Maybe it had just been the peanuts.

How I've been affected by religion in my life

One of the prompts given in my Stunt Writing class is to describe how religion has affected who I am. As soon as I read this, a image blasted into my mind of a girl (me) sitting in a window-seat in the dark, staring out through the glass at some sort of specter. This is what came out of that image.

I'm sitting in a wide window seat snapping my fingers without rhythm. The big house I'm in is creaking. Wind is whistling as if calling overseas friends out to play. In my head though, there is the quiet that comes with prayer, though I have never prayed.

The room itself is nothing but shadows and a patch of golden carpet where my red slippers sit. I have one leg folded beneath me and the other drawn close to my chest. My hands are in my lap, the rings on each finger flashing with the silver coming in through the glass.

The window is right out of Peter Pan, just as my nightgown could have been stolen from Wendy herself. Even the expression on my face as I stare outside at the falling snow is one of longing, as if any moment, I expect a boy with pixy-dust in his eyes to rap his knuckles on the pane in greeting.

The person that drifts up to the window, however, is no Peter Pan. She's just tangles of fog, gray ribbons twisting and looping. She leans towards my window and suddenly she has a form. It is almost as if she is leaning out from the stern of a pirate ship, her hair and her heart caught up by the constant gale.

She peers in at me and instead of pixy-dust in her eyes; there are campfires, not the kind the downtown homeless derive comfort from, but the sort that cowboys struck up on lonely nights in the wood.

"Your campfires are dim tonight." I smile at her and see those fires flicker with amusement.

"If you let me in, you can warm yourself by them." Her eyes, green like Peter Pan's, green like mine, lift upwards to focus on the windows clasp.

"If you were a ghost, you could come in on your own."

 "But I'm not a ghost."

"We've been over this. You can only be a ghost if I let you be." It is a profound thing for me to say and as conservative as I am, it is also uncharacteristic. Had this been a restaurant window and had the floating girl been just a friend, I would never have said such a thing.

I reach up, release the latch and allow a gust of air to rush over me. It is ironic then, what she asks of me next.

"Do you feel warmer?"

"If I did, it would be nothing more than a placebo affect. If I believe you have warmth in you, if I believe in your fire, then I would feel warmth. Your affect on me is based on my belief in you. Without my belief, you aren't even empty air."

"After all these months, you still don't know what to call me. The best you've done is come up with what I'm not," She hooks her thumbs in the pockets of her weathered leathers. "Negatives aren't names Natalie."

"When I first see you," I feel my hair, red as a bloodied sunset, brush back from my shoulders by a sneaky breeze. Some would have thought my visitor was causing it, but as I didn't think so, it wasn't.  "You make me think of a ghost."

"But to call me a ghost, you'd have to admit they exist. You'd like that. You want there to be magic in the world." She knows me, knows me better than my own mother. Any statement she makes about me is true and mirrors my own opinions perfectly. There is no shallow pool for us; only into the deep end of conversation do we dive.

"People want there to be an afterlife too. That doesn't make it exist. My wishing magic existed doesn't mean I can wave my fingers and give myself purple nose hair." I smiled and leaned my head against the wall.

"You're not a ghost. You're not an angel. You're not Peter Pan."

"More negatives."

"You're not even a negative. You're only here because I decided you are."

"So what if you decided I was a ghost or an angel? Would that make me real? Or would I be like your room, walls of wishes and wanting, but lacking in belief?"

Soon as she says it, the moon moves into just the right position. Moonlight floods into my room and dances off millions of wings. There are fairies on bookshelves, angels on posters and sprites in the wallpaper. There is a mural across the ceiling full of clouds and darting dragons. My headboard is lined with griffins with snarling faces. In front of my closed door, like a grisly welcoming mat; there is a row of gargoyles. There is even a little pink butted and rosy cheeked cupid trapped inside a snow-globe. My mother bought it for me when I reached my sweet sixteen and found myself still single.

"For someone who doesn't believe in the divine Natalie, you sure have surrounded yourself with it."

"The Star Trek books in my closet don't mean I want to be an astronaut and build an igloo on the moon. My shoe-boxes full of Australia postcards don't mean I'm going to one day sleep in hostels where geckos climb the ceiling. The wings on my walls don't mean I think there's a heaven out there. You're not an angel here to convince me of a god, not that in that cowgirl getup you've got on. No, you're here to ask profound questions in order to get profound answers, all of which you know already. Our brains run together like drains, after all."

"Why do you keep bringing me here if you learn nothing from it? If you will not budge from your position, why talk about this at all?"

"A person that refuses to discuss their opinions must doubt those very opinions. Those that openly admit their beliefs and share the nature of them with others, they are the ones that are steadfast. I am not afraid of these questions. I am not afraid to call myself an atheist."

"Then why are you afraid to say that title aloud to ears that actually hear?"

"Its' like when I call myself a homeschooler and people decide I am sheltered, uneducated and hopelessly friendless. When I say ‘atheist,’ I am accused of believing in nothing. What the hell though? Why is it that my not believing in a religion must mean that I have no beliefs at all? I believe in love, in family, in a brother having the back of a brother. I believe in loyalty and sacrifice and keeping toxic secrets in order to protect those they'd hurt. I don't believe in god, a higher power, the divine or you. Don't look hurt. You knew that."
The hurt sits at the forefront of her expression for but a moment, then it sinks beneath the surface. No longer do I suspect that she wants to behead me like one of the zombies I write about in my books. Her bangs fall into her eyes and she makes an accusation of her own.

"You're different tonight. You usually want something from me. Now, I sense you want to give."

"I know who I am. I am a good daughter, sister and friend. One day, I will raise kids who are homeschoolers and atheists. I am proud of who I am, but-" I hesitate, bite at my lip, a habit I despise and secretly believe myself unable to defeat. "Tell me about the road and when you're done, I'll give you what you want."

"What I want?" She reels back from the window slightly, retreating as I have never seen her do. She cannot have wants, not when hers are mine.

"Yes," I murmur and settle lower in my seat. "I'll give you a name," I shut my eyes and then spin a finger in the air to hurry her along. "Tell me of the road."

“I live out of a backpack. I wear old leathers that smell like horses even though I don’t ride. I build fires in the middle of the woods in the hope that somebody will appear out of the woods and share it with me. I drift in and out of towns; make love to nameless men under stars I know so well, I could give celestial tours. I don’t stay anywhere, but I do make friends. They live out of backpacks too and together, we all smell of horses and shared campfires and the meandering road. We travel on foot, on trains, on buses and planes and boats. Our pockets grow stuffed with receipts and boarding passes. We sleep next to an ocean that steals our spare clothing in the night. We sleep next to cliffs so sheer; we could tumble to our deaths and smile into the fall. Our backpacks are our pillows and our scars are our stories. When I sit with them, my friends and the stars and the fire, I warm my secrets over the flames like I do my frostbitten hands. I don’t hide who I am, my pride at my better parts, my shame at the darker ones. They know god is not my North Star because they’ve seen me whistle at the true twinkling one.

As she speaks, I can see her story fall into place upon her. She is wearing the leathers that smell of horsehide. Her arms, which are bare to the shoulder, are littered in her scars, telltale signs of her toxic secrets. Strapped to her shoulders is a backpack. It’s old and worn and full of holes, as if somebody has beaten it with a club. She holds it out to me and it seems to sag with the effort of remaining corporeal. It is a tired looking thing, but a contented sort of tired.

“What wouldn’t you give to be me?” Her voice sounds as if there are clopping hooves hidden within it.
“What would you give to turn yourself inside out, to be the one sleeping under the North Star, a nomad, who sees a girl in a Wendy nightgown hovering outside her window? What would you give to live out of a backpack, out on the road?"

“There is a part of me that wants nothing more than to walk out the front door, board a bus, stuff my pockets with paper and take off. Its’ a part that aches,” I can’t help wincing at saying such a vulnerable thing aloud. “But I’m lucky. I don’t need to go anywhere at all to be a nomad,” I reach out, not for the backpack, but for her hat. I plop it on my own head, its stiffness all but gone with time. It smells like her too, smells like the nomad I’ve dreamed her into being.

But an uncanny thing happens when the hat hits my head. My Wendy nightgown vanishes, to be replaced by leathers. My skin ripples into the bronze of desert travel. My hair draws itself into a low, loose, lazy ponytail. I didn’t need to look in a mirror to know there were campfires in my eyes.

"You know what to call me," She retreated without moving. "Say it. Say it now."

"You’re like every one of my stories. You’re like every bible and religion there is," I stand up on the purple cushions and plant my feet, clad in bent out of shape boots, firmly. Bracing my hands to either side of the window, I lean out and confront my negative. "Every day, in every country, people want the impossible to exist. You hear a creak in the other room and you want it to be the ghost of your dead mother. So it is. Your brother nearly gets run down by a car, but dodges just in time and you see a miracle. So it is. Your baby was born with low chances of survival, but hangs on anyway because of its guardian angel. So it is. You want an angel, a ghost or you want god, then they are there. I can do that too. I'm an atheist and I can do that. You want to know how? Because I, just like you and everybody else, have a fucking imagination. I imagined you up. I wrote you up. You and the bible and god and ghosts and angels and Bigfoot, you all exist for one reason and one reason only, because humans have an imagi-fucking-nation! You have a name and it’s a figment. You are a figment of my imagination. Like god, you don't exist if I decide you don't," I lower my voice back down to a whisper, to the pitch of a prayer. "Want to know what sets me and you aside from Christians and their god? I know that when I snap my fingers, you'll be gone, because you live off of me. All of those Christians?” My voice loses its volume, lowers to the pitch of crackling coals. They've forgotten how to snap their fingers.”

I snap my fingers then and the figment of my imagination vanishes. My skin is the color of chilled winter, my hair is adrift and my nightgown is swishing about my knees. I pull the window shut, latch it and sit back down in the window seat.  The big house is still creaking. The wind is still whistling as if calling overseas friends out to play. In my head, there is the quiet that comes with prayer, but it isn’t derived from words whispered over clasped hands.

It’s because I could, at any second, snap my fingers and create entire universes, entire religions
.

“You were right Figment,” Staring up at the North Star; I drum my fingers against my knee. “I do feel warmer.”

My Interactions Stunt Laid Out

STUNT:

Nicole Orr

-I commit to writing for 30 minutes every day

-My stunt is focused on becoming more comfortable with interactions

-I will consider this aspect from 3 different perspectives, one each week for three weeks

Week One: Awareness.

In this week, I will:

Reach out to people from my childhood, my workplace, my family and my travels and I will ask them how they saw me. Did they notice me avoiding interactions?

Start a blog/diary on why I think I am this way.

Week Two: Action

In this week, I will:

Make a minimum of three invitations to do something social

Engage in at least two conversations with total strangers

Have at least one long phone conversation with someone that's not family

Get in touch with somebody from my childhood

Make a list of expectations on how I think these interactions will go

Week Three: Analysis

In this week, I will:

Analyze how expectations for interactions panned out

Answer the question: why am I this way?

Plan of Attack:

I am a very friendly person. I can make people laugh. I can maintain long conversations. I do very well in job interviews and I pride myself on my eloquence. All of this, however, is in appearance only. I've got a fantastic poker face. Inwardly, I am always fighting to control my environment. I can think of nothing more intimidating than an hour long car ride with someone I barely know. Not more than a few words in with somebody and I'm already planning my exit. I get so wrapped up in how a conversation might fall flat; a hug might go too long, an invitation overstayed, a gift unappreciated, friendliness unwanted or a compliment taken wrongly, that I prefer to just bow out entirely. I want to get out of it quickly, all of it, in a well controlled manner. The shorter the interaction, the less likely it'll turn awkward. The more the interaction is under my control; the easier it'll be to escape it. My stunt is to become more aware of my doing this, to lessen my avoidance of interactions and hopefully, to feel safe enough in said interactions to not even look for an escape at all.

Removal: I will not bring family members along to interactions to make them easier. 

Consequences: No Almost Human episodes

Places: I will watch my avoidance of interactions aboard public transit, in the workplace and with friends

People: I will ask family to point out when they notice me avoiding meeting people

Things: I will use my computer to keep an online record of my experiences and will interact with the Stunt Writing forums

Research: I will research social anxiety, introversion vs. extroversion,

Data: I will keep hard copies of everything I learn, including the thoughts others give me

Change: I will recognize my own excuses and ignore them

Practice:  Instead of waiting for people to ask me questions, I will talk about myself anyway and NOT finish my sentences with a question.

How to explain?

How do I explain to someone else how it is to walk in my brain? To look out through my eye sockets? I wonder if Hannibal would have this much trouble telling Hell's Kitchen about his latest favorite foreign delicacy. Until this year, I had no desire to peel back the layers of my brain matter and expose them to someone else, let alone me. I am, however, participating in an online class that asks its participants to pick something that intimidates them and turn facing it into a three week project. We are then expected to write about said project. I chose "interactions."

I will be posting my "stunt writing plan" as its called, but I want to tell you in my own words what this means. Its' not as simple as stating go out and eat with somebody, ask a guy out, go dancing, call a friend, etc.

CARS: I can't explain how awkward it is to go on a car ride with somebody alone. The tug-of-war between them talking and my talking-who runs the conversation? Who lets it fall dead? The incredible, suffocating awkwardness when silence happens.

CALLS: How fast do I look for an escape from a phone conversation? I push the "answer" button and I'm already forming an escape sentence such as "sorry, dinner is almost on," "I was just about to head out to work," "I need to hit the hay because I have to be up at the crack of dawn," and all of these can be true or utter lies. It doesn't matter. I've got one of these excuses in hand EVERY TIME. It makes me feel safe.

INVITES: It doesn't matter if they're from somebody I like, somebody I don't, somebody I barely know, but when I receive one, my first instinct is to find a reason I'll be busy. I've used the "I'm sick" and the "I'm out of town" many times. If I do go? Yeah, I have a good time, I'm glad I went. Will I try to escape the next invite too? Absolutely.

HUGS: I feel like Sheldon from Big Bang Theory in regards to these. How long should they last? How long is too long? How short can be judged rude? Where do the hands go? How does one initiate one without being rude? Don't get me wrong. I love to be touched. I love to be hugged. I can name several people I know (who aren't family) who are incredible at it. I just don't know how to GO ABOUT STARTING one. If I'm at a gathering where people are hugging goodbye, I'm known for conveniently backing away.

PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION: I am a traveler. There's very little I love more than hitting the road, watching the world pass me by through the window, be that a bus window, train window, car window, plane window. BUT, people sitting next to me is something I dread. I like meeting other travelers, but if they are SHORT meetings. I need to be able to leave them whenever I want and I can't do that on a moving vehicle. If they're next to me and it turns awkward-well, its' something that detracts from my adoration of travel. On local, city buses, I'm known to be one of those people that puts their backpack on the seat alongside them. If there are people standing who are glaring at this, I would prefer to stand up and spend the rest of the trip on my feet than let someone sit next to me. Is this unreasonable? Unarguably. Does this stop me? It hasn't yet.

This is me. This is how my brain operates and apparently, how its' operated for a long time. I just had no idea that this was unusual. My mother has tinnitus. She spent the first THIRTY years of her life thinking that everyone heard a screeching noise in their ears, that it was normal and it was a revelation to her when she found out otherwise. I was completely thrown to find the same applied to my perspective of interactions. This is me. This is how I AM and no, it isn't normal.

Its time to peel back the layers and maybe, just maybe found out why. More than that, perhaps I'll even find out how many layers deep this goes.