If I could just intellectualize it.
If I could justify it all to myself.
If I could believe it really had nothing to do with me.
If I really could ignore what they say about me and not secretly wonder if they are right.
If I didn’t need so badly for people to be aorund me and love me.
I could believe that people really like me for who I am not for what I can do for them.
If this experience really hadn’t had an extreme effect on me emotionally and on my confidence, I could believe eveything was all right.
I could go back to being super nicole.
The person for whom the term "super woman" was coined for.
My mother once  said to me that she and my father had wanted to make sure I was a self-confident, vocal woman and that she was afraid that they might have overdone it.

Oh, how good I am at fronting that beautiful smile with eyes looking inward searching.
If you don’t look close you can’t even tell.
I just float around.
Searching for where I went... behind that high wall built from idle threats, uninformed comments, repeated stares and cemented by rapidly  disappearing confidence.
Trying to slowly punch down the barricade by realizations and by being  myself.
Trying to figure out who I am and letting emotions go... crying away the night and sleeping away the day.
Waking up and wondering what happened to my day.
Making excuses far from the thruth.
It is all coming back.