I knew she was nervous. I could tell by the way her hand shook slightly as she put it to her lips. She bit her cuticles when she was feeling unsure and insecure. The slight unsteadiness of her hand and her resorting to her nervous habit told me something was not right.
I liked her. I never knew how she felt about me and because of the complexity of our relationship I didn’t know if I ever would. In another time and place I would have liked to be her friend, but in this time and place, I was her boss which automatically put a kind of barrier in the way.
One of the reasons I liked her was her complexity. She appeared to the outside world as one tough cookie. She was petite, but she was strong. I knew bits and pieces of her life that I’d gleaned over time. Little scraps that she’d shared or let slip. She had grown up the outsider in a rough area and she knew how to fight. I always had the feeling that she’d learned long ago not to let anyone see a hint of weakness. Her childhood had not been easy or even close to ideal, but she’d survived.
She was beautiful, light red hair, clear alabaster skin. I sometimes thought, however, that she doubted that she was. In a world of enhanced beauty blasted at us constantly by the media, hers was a natural one. She was also smart. She’d only had a high school education and I’d gotten the feeling from pieces she’d let slip at various times, that it wasn’t a stellar one, but she’d pushed herself to return to school after many years and now she found herself competing with younger kids who had more time and a more recent dealing with the educational system. I knew that it was hard for her, but she drove herself on.
I knew she’d gone back to school and was desperately trying to make up for lost time. I didn’t know her age for sure, but I knew she’d seen the back side of her twenties and had begun the slow march to a time when the female ‘biological clock’ stopped its steady ticking. She loved children. It was her compassion for them and understanding that had led her to choose to pursue a career in social work. And sometimes, perhaps wrongly, I thought it bothered her that she may not have any of her own.
I wasn’t sure what caused the nervousness, but sometimes I thought life might be getting a bit much for her to handle. I wanted to help, but I was always afraid to cross that invisible line. The complexity of being her boss and not her friend felt like an invisible wall. I could see her, but could not reach out and really touch her life.
Other hints she’d let slip made me know she was dealing with past problems. Her foray into classes for her Social Work degree had the side effect of bringing up past issues she may have thought long buried.
Her complex mix of strength and fragility made her a fascinating person. I often wondered how much of the fragileness the outside world really saw. She was very good at maintaining an exterior façade. She always had a ready smile and laugh. People thought she was a nice person and she was. But how many ever looked past the smile to see the nervous gnawing of her fingernails? Did they see what she wanted them to see, a strong, tough woman who knew how to handle herself? Or did they see any of what she feared they might see, a scared woman who lived life by forcing herself to keep going when she just wanted to curl up and quit?
Sometimes I thought I glimpsed a reflection of my own insecurities in her. I too had grown up with in a tough childhood where I was always the outsider.
I hoped whatever it was that worried her now would pass. I had confidence that she could handle it. She’d handled so much in life already. But I also knew how lonely that could be.
That was the worst part about the kind of life I’d lived, one that I had a feeling she’d shared; feeling that you always had to be strong. If you weren’t, something bad would happen. No one could be relied on to carry you, so you had to carry yourself.
It kept you safe, but it also was very lonely.
I watched her covertly from behind that invisible wall and wished she knew someone else understood.