“You’ll see. Oh, and you’re riding with me today,” I said.
“Don’t I get a choice in that?” she asked.
“Do you want to be better at speaking with people or not?” I asked.
“Why can’t I know where we’re going?”
“Because if I tell you, you won’t come,” I said.
“Seriously, Christian. Where are we going?” she asked as she opened my door.
“Stella, shut up and get in the car,” I said.
We rode in silence as we wound through town. I could tell by the way Stella’s leg was jiggling she was painfully nervous for what was about to happen, and for a split second, I thought about telling her. A part of me hated to see her like this, anxious and unaware of what was going on, but that was part of getting her to understand.
Public speaking was never about how you talked to people. Public speaking was all about the nerves that came with how you thought people would interpret you. It’s a self-conscious mechanism bred underneath years of self-esteem issues, and for the first time, I was getting a glimpse of that part of Stella. She was nervous. Afraid. Trying to figure out what the hell was going on. She felt threatened, but she wasn’t angry about it.
She was pushing herself into a dark corner, hoping no one would look.
But, I was looking. I was watching her body shake in the fear that was blanketing her. And, so long as she asked me for help, I would help her.
Even though I knew she wasn’t going to enjoy what I had planned.
We pulled into the parking lot of a park, and I saw her confused gaze pan towards me. I parked the car and got out, and I was shocked when she followed my lead. She didn’t ask any other questions, and she didn’t wonder out loud why we were at a park.
She was, yet again, waiting for me to make the first move.
“Do you know why we’re here?” I asked.
“Not a fucking clue,” she said.
“You know all those times my mother and I would go to the park?” I asked.
“Yeah. Every Wednesday evening and Saturday afternoon,” she said.
“We weren’t going to play,” he said.
“Then what were you doing?” I asked.
“She used to bring me to crowded parks just like this one and make me talk to people in the crowd,” I said.
“Wait. She what?”
“Yeah. She’d made me talk to both individual people and to large groups. Randomly. About anything,” I said.
“Aren’t mothers supposed to teach their children never to talk to strangers?” she asked.
“She didn’t just abandon me here,” I said, chuckling. “But, she never wanted me to be scared of talking to other people. She was scared her entir
e life, especially after what my biological father did to her. She didn’t want me growing up with that fear.”
I could feel Stella’s eyes on me as I talked, and for the first time since I was a child, I felt nervous about talking. I had her full attention, and I could see the empathy in her eyes, but there was still that twinge of fear.
She was putting together what I was going to ask her to do, and the tremor in her hands began to grow with every passing word I used.
“I’m not talking to a bunch of random people in a park, Christian,” she said.
“Stella, your fear of talking to others has nothing to do with your ability to talk,” I said. “It has to do with how you think people will perceive you.”