The Real You

Conflict and Confrontation

If there's something scarier than introducing your boyfriend to your parents, I haven't found it yet.

Of course the tense relationship between me and my parents wasn't a good a good precedent to begin with. And yet, here I was. Alan was at my side, his hand encouragingly wrapped around my own as we sat silently in the car. There was no need to talk. Not yet. He knew how frightening this whole thing was for me, and he didn't push me. Instead, he remained by my side, offering me a silent comfort with merely his presence.

The truth was that I always played my cards close to my chest, never revealing too much. At work I was driven and motivated, and often considered harsh. Direct. Straightforward. I'd never allowed myself to be mellow or appear weak in anyone's eyes. You didn't get anywhere by showing too many emotions. I wasn't cold or clinical, merely unable to really become all emotional and mushy. One didn't get where I was at my job by being sweet and gentle.

And Alan knew this. But he also knew how much it pained me that my relationship with my parents was as emotionally strained as it currently was. It always put me under a lot of pressure, wanting to please them without wanting to show how badly I craved their approval. I had stopped trying to make everybody happy a long time ago, and learned pretty early on that pissing everyone off is a piece of cake. I'd let go of that childish dream of making them happy and proud at everything I did. I had to be my own person, make my own mistakes. But a small part of me was still that little girl who wanted daddy to tell her he was proud, or mommy to whisper sweet nothings in my ears as she cradled me, telling me she loved me.

So Alan remained by my side, showing me his moral support by merely being there for me when I needed him most. And a small part of me feared he'd laugh at my weakness, to be rejected for this show of unadulterated and raw emotion.

"Whenever you're ready, Samantha" Alan said quietly, leaning in to cup my jaw with his hand and his thumb brushing my cheekbone in a reassuring caress.

"Whenever I'm ready" I whispered, the words barely audible, a faint whisper as I looked through the windshield.

My childhood home still stood exactly the way I remembered it. It was huge, a Spanish style hacienda, and stood two stories tall. From the outside the Mediterranean style home was shaped like a large square, with large closed inner courtyards and garden walls with lots of stone and brick dominating the outdoor areas. If I closed my eyes I could still feel the stifling summer heat as I wandered through the house, fingers tracing the rough pattern of the white plastered walls.

Finally scraping together all the courage I could muster I gave Alan a tiny nod, before exiting the car. Red dust swirled around my low-heeled sandals as I closed the car door with a definitive thud. I was wearing a pair of khaki pants and a pale blue blouse, hair pinned up loosely as to keep the stray strands of wayward hair from my neck, which always proved suffocating in Spain's renowned summer heat.

Alan was out of the car and at my side in the time it took me to blink. He gave me an encouraging smile, and took a hold of my hand.

"Where to?" he mouthed quietly.

My brow furrowed as I weighed my options. Knowing what lay waiting inside the house beside childhood memories was daunting enough for me to want to postpone it for as long as possible. So instead on knocking on the bloody front door I nodded towards the high veranda that surrounded the house, and started towards it with small but confident steps. Alan was following me colsely, still holding my hand.

Around the corner of the house we went, the heavy wooden support beams of the roof of the slated roof blocking us from the worst of the mid-morning sun. A play of shadows danced across the floor, the intricately welded iron balustrade warm beneath my hands as I trailed my hand along it. It was as if I could hear the echo of my memories, the faint laughter of the childhood version of me as I ran across the wooden floorboards, barefooted, knees scraped and breathing heavily as my mother yelled at me from inside to get back to my schoolwork.