For a long long time Frankie felt shy. Shyness ruled her world like a shadowy grim faced dictator. She felt trapped behind some grey prison wall; occasionally glimpsing through the odd tiny chink, a world of easy conversation and confidence. Oftentimes, she believed she would always be shy. It seemed her destiny. Her shyness was a crown of thorny awkwardness. When asked to speak in groups, she would shrug her shoulders, blush and wish herself far away. In her dreams she was a different person, still with the same name, but behaving completely differently as if she was a reborn Frankie.
Not unnaturally, Frankie wondered most days what it might be like not to be shy. She loved the idea of talking confidently. It was her ideal, her holy grail. She loved the possibility of words too. “Here I am”, words could say. “I’m happy being any Frankie at all.” Then in her dreams she would speak what was in her heart; she dared to answer, clearly, bravely, wittily. She rehearsed her answers. She practised in her mirror at home. Yet in the world outside her head, beyond the safety of the mirror, Frankie felt afraid. She dreaded situations where more seemed expected of her than a short quiet answer. Frankie preferred short safe words that slipped out quietly drawing little attention. Yet the irony was that her safe words suffocated her slowly and Frankie knew they undermined her. Made her far less than she was.
Her shyness was a prison; her shyness was the single recurring story which always ended in disappointment. She felt outside of her own life, disconnected, like a loiterer who kept looking across at the fun which seemed so far away, it appeared from another world.
Lessons were easier unless she had to read aloud or stand in front of her class.
What was the point of knowing words if you only used them in your head? Witty conversations danced about her imagination but when the opportunity came for them to come out into the real world to play, they ran away scared of being spoken and heard. Frankie wanted so much to express herself but when the chances came she retreated. She felt shy and did not feel able to honour her words.
She stood on the edge of everything and wondered what she could do.
She knew in her heart she wanted to change because she felt exhausted by her tired old stories and a new story. She wanted a better story. She wanted living words she could connect with.
So she began a better story. A story where she would banish shyness and kill her dragon fears. A story where she conquered the dark terrors of everlasting outsider monsters with her shining confident smile and witty articulate sword.
First of all she imagined what she wanted. Mercy mercy me. She forgave her lurking past.
She imagined herself bolder, calmer, and speaking in an assured voice.
In her favourite lessons she felt a little more comfortable because sometimes she found herself across the shyness wall, carried away by her passion for her subject.
Then she grew taller in herself. She knew things. Her voice was stronger clearer.
Frankie knew there were ways to more confidence and that confidence came and went for most of the world, but for Frankie confidence was the fabulous friend she never met. Being witty was her holy grail of confidence but she spent many awkward moments watching the world rather than joining in that sometimes people assumed her arrogant or uninterested. She usually loved her time at home or with her brother Ted but school and work made her nervous especially when it was time for talking to other people. Breaks, lunch time, trips even those lessons where you were expected to contribute made her mumble, look down and blush. She practised talking to her mirror, copying the smiles of those natural talkers who were gifted by the magic of ever moving mouths and witty confidence. Between herself and the world of the confident was a wall and the wall didn’t seem to shrink or crumble as the years went by. It wasn’t that she didn’t try to help herself. Feel the fear and do it anyway as her mother and a couple of teachers advised.
She asked questions in conversations and as she became older gave good eye contact as the advice manuals suggested. But she couldn’t leap into conversations naturally even after practising talking to the mirror at home.
