I was that girl that sat in the corner and never said a word

            As I reach the Seattle part of this story, it’s been getting harder for me to sit down and write about it.  New York City is a far distant past that has faded and only exists in my memories.  But Seattle is here and Seattle is still real, although it’s not the same as it was in August of 2008.  But that’s only because I’m not the same as I was in August of 2008.  Yes, I have the same moral groundings and general personality that makes me me, but everything else has changed.  Or maybe changed isn’t the correct word here…I’ve grown.  I’ve grown into the me that I knew I was destined to be, but couldn’t figure out how to become while living in NYC.

            I was very shy as a child.  Actually…that’s kind of a lie…I was painfully shy as a child.  As an adolescent, I was very shy.  By the time I hit college, I would describe myself as simply shy.  And now, although I still think I can be reserved in certain situations, I can say that one thing I am not is shy. 

Growing up, I always knew I was shy, and I hated it.  I remember when my parents told me at the age of 12 that we were moving from Richmond, VA to Rochester, NY.  I remember thinking that I had finally started to come out of my shell a little in middle school and I was worried I was going to lose it all in the move.  I remember making a vow to myself that in New York, I would not be shy.  I wanted so badly to make friends in my new school.  I wanted so badly to fit in.  But that’s hard to do after leaving all the friends you’ve known since kindergarten.  And in the meantime, I hit my growth spurt that summer and grew about a foot taller in those few summer months, beginning my skyrocket into the 5’10” tower I am today.  So now I was in a new city, in a new school, in a new body that I didn’t quite know how to handle yet.  Everything was unfamiliar.  And the problem with trying to make yourself unshy is that right at the point when you decide that you don’t want to be shy, that’s when all those shy feelings kick in.  Your brain shuts down, you don’t know what to say, you awkwardly respond to others with one word answers, and then 5 minutes later kick yourself as you think of the perfect thing you could have said.  No one gives you lessons on how not to be shy.  At least no one gave me those lessons.  And you can’t teach yourself, because all you’ve ever known is shy—and you don’t know how to be anything else.

            The trick I’ve learned over the years, as I’ve outgrown all the shyness, is that in order to not be shy, you must become comfortable in your own skin. You must like yourself and like who you are in order to be okay with being yourself in front of the world.  You must believe that you are a person worth being and a person worth knowing.  You must believe in yourself enough that it doesn’t scare you to show yourself to the world. 

As much as I love my HLM Sierra, I used her as a crutch for my shyness throughout high school and college.  I wholeheartedly take the blame for this upon myself, because throughout our lives she has never done anything but encourage me to be the person I am.  But in my mind, she was always the prettier one, the more outspoken one, the one who had the nerve to try something new, take a risk, and say what she thought.  I admired her for that, and I followed in her footsteps, but never really tread my own path.  In those late teenage years, I needed that crutch.  I needed someone who would pull me along, force me out of my comfort zone, convince me that I had something to share with the world.  But after a while, I began to rely on this too much.  I chose not to blaze my own trail when she could blaze it for me and I could just follow closely behind.

            It wasn’t until Sierra left New York that I began to make my own footprints in the world.  Sierra left because she needed to find her own place, which forced me to finally make a path for myself.  It was during my last 2 ½ years in NYC that I found Lucy…that I started running…that I dared to make choices on my own (whether I wanted to or not). 

So my biggest fear when I began my life in Seattle was that I would fall into my old ways, fall back into step behind my closest friend.  But fate had different plans for me and placed a few roadblocks in my way to prevent this from happening.  The plan when I first got to Seattle was for me to move into Sierra’s 2^nd bedroom in her apartment, make myself comfortable there, and fall into her life.  But suddenly one week after I got to Seattle, Sierra’s slumlord showed up for the first time in 8 years claiming that dogs were not allowed in the apartment (despite the dog that had lived there for the past 5 years and the 2 dogs that had lived there previous to that).  This was 2 weeks before the end of the month, and he gave us that long to get the dog out or get ourselves out.  Of course, Lucy wasn’t going anywhere by herself, so suddenly Sierra and I were faced with the challenge of finding a new home for ourselves in about 10 days.

In the meantime, I made my first couple trips down to my new job, met my co-workers for the first time, saw my school for the first time, and saw my empty classroom for the first time.  I had been hired months before through a phone interview and had no idea what I was walking into.  And when I say empty, I mean empty.  I was panicked.  Suddenly I had to fill a classroom and make it my own.  I needed books, furniture, storage containers, organization systems.  My staff was supportive and helpful and wonderful, but I still felt like I was drowning.

Therefore my first month in Seattle was filled with apartment hunting, school set-up, moving again, and settling in again.  Lucy was frazzled and completely unsure about what was happening in her life, and this only added to the stress of that first month.  Somewhere in the midst of all of this, I forgot to be nervous about starting a brand new life.  I forgot to be worried about making new friends, building new relationships.  I forgot to be concerned with whether or not I was falling into Sierra’s world, because Sierra’s world got turned upside-down too.  She had just come out of a long relationship and now had to find a new home.

August 2008: New apartment, new lives, and the last official time I had a tan.
Welcome to Seattle!!

This means that by the time we were settled into our apartment in the secluded neighborhood of Magnolia, we were both crossing a bridge.  We both needed new friends, new relationships, and a new home.  Suddenly instead of me following closely behind as Sierra paved the way, we were stepping side-by-side into the fog cloud of the unknown.   And in a funny way, the path that was made for me after my move—the forced and sudden change to a new apartment that led to me feeling comfortable walking next to Sierra instead of behind her—was because of Lucy.  Because Lucy was not allowed in an apartment.  I try to imagine how different things would have turned out if Sierra and I had not ended up in Magnolia, and I can’t even fathom it.  So I give Lucy credit.  As usual she was there to force a change right at the time when I thought everything was ok.  And without that change, life would not be the same.