by Jessica Pan
Soon after the sauna “incident,” Sam and I decided to move to a new apartment in London.
Our noisy upstairs neighbors drove us out of our previous home. I blame their daughter for most of the noise. I know you aren’t supposed to say that you hate a child. I also know that if you met this eight-year-old child, this tiny, leaden-footed girl, you would hate her, too. You would. Maybe she’ll grow up and be the next Millie Bobby Brown or Malala or Malia, I don’t know. But at eight, she was stomping, yelling, and throwing shit onto the floor above our heads with wild abandon, even when she was happy. It’s hard enough to say to your neighbors, “Please be quieter,” but it’s even harder to say, “Your child’s mirth makes me want to die.” When she took up the violin, Sam and I knew the jig was up.
Unpacking boxes in our new place down the road, I am sorting through piles of business cards. Magazines. Books. Fliers.
And then I find it. The Moth program, hidden in a pile of books and magazines. I study the program and find the name of a director. Meg.
A few years earlier, I’d finally attended a live Moth event at Union Chapel, a working church by day and a famous music and comedy venue by night in London. That evening, I had been spellbound by the storytellers, standing under the spotlight, beneath the colorful stained glass windows, performing for an audience of nine hundred people. I had felt a steady thrum of anxiety, awe, and sympathy for them.
I walk by Union Chapel most days, as I live in the same neighborhood. In fact, the private art show I’d attended with Roger, the painter I’d met on the street, was two doors down from the chapel. Today, I pause, holding the program in my hands, thinking about what to do next.
I’d been doing my best to extrovert. I was chatting with strangers, I was saying yes to more social engagements, but this, this was my psychological nemesis, the one thing I couldn’t imagine myself ever being able to do. My story. On stage. Under a spotlight. No notes.
My time in TV reporter jail and my lightning-quick exit were a source of such embarrassment and shame, because I had run away from my fear rather than facing it head-on. And I know, deep down, that what scares you owns you. I didn’t want to be owned by my fear anymore.
There’s no question—I have stage fright. Still, this doesn’t feel like a valid excuse not to try. Other shy introverts step up and conquer this fear every day. Why not me this time?
Emboldened by finding the program, I compose an email to Meg about a story I could tell. Their main-stage storytellers are usually very accomplished, like astronauts or famous novelists, or someone who has lived through very unusual circumstances like finding out about a surprise twin. But occasionally they have a story from a normal person who finds themselves in a curious situation—like asking random people on the Tube who the Queen is. This is a story I could try to tell and one Meg might be interested in, especially because it had happened locally, right near Union Chapel. I type up a quick summary and hit send before I can change my mind. Before I can actually picture myself onstage in front of nine hundred people watching from the darkness. Before I can imagine the stakes of signing up for this kind of event. Then I immediately go for a walk and try to suppress the urge to scream out of sheer fear and regret.
✽ ✽ ✽
“So just tell me the full story,” Meg says.
She’s on the phone, calling from Sweden. I’m sitting in my new apartment in London.
Meg is warm, her voice hearty. I’ve probably heard it on The Moth podcast a dozen times before. I quickly tell her about my foray into talking to strangers, and Meg is delighted by my experience of how skittish British people are when you talk to them out of the blue.
“You know, people in London are much friendlier than in my village in Sweden. People never talk to each other here, but they do stare at you.” Meg had relocated to Sweden from New York a few years ago but visits London regularly for work.
“I feel like people here avoid eye contact, too,” I say.
“Not compared to Sweden,” she says. “Everything is very insular. I throw an annual Christmas party and invite everyone I know, and people here cannot fathom that I combine friend groups. They think it’s so strange.”
I don’t tell Meg that the idea of throwing a big Christmas party for everyone I know sounds like a nightmare and that I’m gonna have to side with the Swedes on this one.
As we wrap up the call, Meg says she’s not sure whether she can include my story in her program.
“I’ll be in touch in a few weeks,” she says.
I hang up, my heart beating fast, half hoping I never hear from her again.
But it is not to be. Meg follows up to say she wants to cast me in the next show. In one month.
What? I can’t be ready for this kind of mammoth task in one month. I thought I had multiple months to prepare, maybe with hypnosis, maybe with a lobotomy, maybe with a well-timed religious miracle.
I tell Meg I’m not ready—but could I be in the show in six months’ time? She tells me no—she’s already organizing the other stories to fit in around mine.
In my year of extroverting, I’d hoped this challenge would come last. Public speaking is my biggest fear, and I wanted to work up to it. Also, delaying it increased the odds that some entirely unpredictable calamity would occur before the date and I wouldn’t actually have to do it at all (see, again, “well-timed religious miracle”).
I don’t say these things to Meg. I ignore the frantic, chaotic catastrophizing going on in my brain and quickly give her a tentative yes before I can fully process the reality of what I’m doing.
And then I immediately start googling ways to combat stage fright. The first article I land on recommends taking beta-blockers to inhibit the body’s response to adrenaline.
Part of me feels very tempted to do this. But I also know it is a shortcut. It isn’t facing the beast. It is sedating the beast and tiptoeing around it.
Realizing I am mere weeks away from the Moth performance, I am white-knuckle terrified. When I think of being onstage in front of all of those people, with no notes, no backup, no nothing, I break into a cold sweat. I want to curl up in a ball and hide. I want to flee my current life and start a new one. Preferably somewhere warm. It will not involve public speaking. It will involve lots of carbs. Maybe I could be a baker. No, I hate waking up early. Whatever. New me will figure it out.
That night, Sam burns a grilled cheese sandwich on the stovetop and I scream, “WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?”
He stares at me, aghast. Notices my shaking hands.
“Jess, you’re going to be fine,” Sam says.
“No, I’m not,” I say. Inside, I’m screaming, “Don’t you know it is THE END of days?”
I know he understands, that he wants to understand, but I also know he can’t. He doesn’t have the fear the way I do.
Seventy-five percent of people fear public speaking more than they fear death. Sociobiologists trace this fear back to our ancestors: singling yourself out from a group is inviting them to attack you. Or ostracize you. Which in modern life means wandering alone until you die of exposure and starvation, still clutching your PowerPoint notes.
I will have to fight a deep, ingrained evolutionary instinct to get onto that stage.
Talking to strangers on the street was hard. Now, compared to talking to nine hundred strangers at the same time, it seems like a walk in the park.
In a classic self-defeating move, the extent of my fear means I’m doing nothing to prepare because I’m petrified to even try. Meg wants me to rewrite my story to adapt it for the stage: I am definitely not doing this. I’m also not practicing it, not rehearsing it, not getting hypnotized to become a different person who is capable of doing it.
I am also not sleeping. I lie awake, staring into the darkness, my mind whirring. I download various relaxation apps. Too antsy for meditation, I opt for listening to bedtime stori
es instead to lull me to sleep. Somehow, I had made it through my childhood without hearing the story of the Velveteen Rabbit, and, let me tell you, I’m grateful for it. Did we all know that the creepy rabbit has feelings but he’s not real? What is that? He has buttons for eyes? This is horrifying. How is this soothing?
Almost nightly, sleep evades me until dawn, when my brain, exhausted and fried, finally gives in to slumber. An hour later I’m jolted awake by a woman yelling at full volume from my phone, “‘I am Real!’ said the little Rabbit. ‘I am Real!’”
✽ ✽ ✽
“I don’t know whether I can do this,” I say to my friend. She has just flown in from Berlin (remember, I have no friends in London), as we make our way through Hampstead Heath toward the swimming ponds. I have come to love this pocket of London—it’s like if Central Park had swimming ponds but also they were segregated by gender and hidden by trees so when you get in, it’s just you and a bunch of half-naked ladies swimming in seclusion. It’s very peaceful, and Jessica is taking me here because she senses my current sky-high level of anxiety.
“You aren’t yet the person you are going to be at the end of this,” she says as we approach the ponds. “You’re going to change to fit the challenge. It’s going to be great.”
We slip out of our jeans, boots, and coats in the outdoor dressing room. She gets into the cold water first. We are both half Chinese and named Jessica, but she is great at public speaking and talking to strangers. We’re the precise inverse of each other.
She’s already halfway across the pond while I’m slowly submerging myself. The water is so cold that it prickles my skin and shocks my body.
Forty-five seconds later, I climb out and am sunning myself on the deck when a woman in her sixties, Jane, comes over to say hello. She and Jessica are old friends, because Jessica used to live in London, and also she is friends with everyone.
When she is done talking to us, Jane turns and dives into the pond headfirst. When she emerges, I say, “I can’t believe you got your hair wet when it’s so cold!”
“Oh, I always have to get my head wet. It just deletes everything that’s weighing on you. It completely clears your mind,” Jane says.
I stare at the murky surface. I am afraid of the cold, dark water, but I might have to jump straight into it, like Jane did. I want to delete everything, too.
✽ ✽ ✽
Eleven days before my performance, I climb out of bed after another sleepless night. To conquer this fear, I need help. Real help. I come across an online forum about getting help for public speaking. Some of the recommendations: hypnotherapy, lots of practice, imagine Dan Rather in his underwear (does this work?), apps, breathing exercises, wrapping yourself in a brightly colored shawl for confidence.
Then, someone named Julia recommends a voice coach and speech therapist who, Julia says, “changed my life” and “cured me completely.” The voice coach is named Alice. I take out my phone.
“Hi, I have stage fright and a big event in ten days; can you help me?” I blurt out as soon as a woman answers.
“What’s your issue?” Alice asks.
Neuroticism, acute self-consciousness, intermittent stutter, insecurity, crippling anxiety, bad back, bad at languages, fear of spiders, shorter than I’d like to be, slow metabolism.
“I blank in public, I get scared, I talk too fast, and I forget what I’m supposed to say.”
Alice picks up on my urgency.
“Come to my house on Tuesday at 2 p.m.”
Finally, an adult who can handle this situation. I think I’ve found my next mentor.
✽ ✽ ✽
Alice lives in south London. On the train, I start feeling excited. I’m going to finally conquer this. This is going to happen. I’ve sent Alice my story, and now she’s going to give me tea and set me on a sofa, listen to me and soothe me, possibly swaddle me. It’s a cool gray day. I wrap my black trench coat snugly around my body as I walk from the train station to her house.
I ring the bell, and a moment later, Alice answers. She has white hair, pulled back in a neat ponytail with tidy bangs. She’s petite, slim, and well dressed in a way that makes her look very clean and wealthy. She could be anywhere between forty-five to seventy-five. I honestly have no idea.
“Come in,” she says, motioning me into her deceptively enormous house, settling in her large kitchen with French doors.
Alice sits across from me at her kitchen table and begins with a few simple questions. Her demeanor is a little cold, and I feel under interrogation. As she probes me about my shyness and stage fright, I become defensive. This doesn’t feel like sinking into a warm bath. Embarrassed by my fear, I find it hard to talk about it to her without feeling judged.
“So tell me the story you’re going to tell on the night,” she says. She looks so expectant. It’s time to perform, and even though it’s just for her, my hands go hot. I swallow.
“So I was in this café, and I found this button . . .” I say to Alice. Alice holds my stare as I talk to her, and it’s unnerving. I lose my place in the story.
I start again. I begin for a few sentences, telling her about moving to London and how I sometimes pet strangers’ dogs, but my mouth is dry, and my heart is racing. And then—my brain does its thing. It kind of flicks off. It goes black. And then there’s nothing there. Literally nothing.
“I’ve forgotten my story,” I say to Alice, stunned. I mean, it’s just an anecdote. She’s not quizzing me on The Canterbury Tales or the oral history of Mongolia—it’s literally something that happened in my life. I’ve been struck with temporary amnesia. I can’t remember the next part.
I picture the stage at Union Chapel. The spotlight and the darkness and hundreds of faces looking at me and me standing there going, “I had buttons . . . my buttons . . . buttons?” It would be so humiliating. Everyone would stare at me, wondering what was wrong with me. I’d always be this fucked-up person who couldn’t pull herself together to do this one simple thing.
Try. THINK, JESSICA. THINK ABOUT YOUR STORY. WHAT HAPPENS IN YOUR STORY NEXT?
As Alice watches me, unmoved, I feel hot, ridiculous tears prick the back of my eyes and start to stream down my face.
She pushes some paper toward me. “Write it down,” she says. I take the paper, barely seeing it through hot tears. I pick up the pen.
“I can’t,” I say. “I don’t remember.” I once read that torturing criminals leads to false confessions. It makes sense to me. I was five minutes away from confessing I was Banksy if it would get Alice to stop staring at me with her piercing blue eyes.
“It’s the segues,” she says. “It’s that turn in the story that doesn’t feel natural; that’s what’s messed you up.”
She tells me to draw out my story in pictures. I am unable to do even this. So she gets out a piece of paper and begins to do it for me.
“OK, so you have a button”—she draws a button, and then she draws a cat.
“Why did you draw a cat?” I ask.
“You said you were petting people’s dogs when you talk to strangers.”
Exactly, I think. Dogs.
She draws an airplane. Badly. I do not see how this is helpful at all. I do not talk about airplanes in my story. Alice is drawing up a time line and filling it with nonsense hieroglyphics, including one of the Union Jack flag to represent me coming to England, a cat to represent me petting dogs, and some spectacles to represent . . . ?
“What are those?”
“That’s your professor you speak to.”
What? My story looks like a children’s scavenger hunt.
This is just going to confuse my mushy brain. She draws a crown to represent the Queen, but my personal hieroglyphic signifier for the Queen would obviously not be a crown; it would be two crossed ankles, in that way that Claire Foy always sits in The Crown.
I pre
tend to go along with it, knowing this won’t work.
“Now tell me the story again,” she says. “You’ve cried, you’ve had your little emotional bit, and now tell me the story.”
What? False. The emotional bit was not over. I have a lot of good, hard crying left in me, Alice. At this point, I’m still holding my emotion in, because there hasn’t been that satisfying release of heavy, fast tears and shaky breathing. After ten to fifteen minutes of that then, then, I’ll be done.
But we don’t have time for that.
I run upstairs to the bathroom to grab some tissues. I sit on the edge of her enormous bathtub trying to pull myself together. Alice is clearly a tough love kind of person. She is not going to indulge me with the swaddling I’d imagined. This is going to be hard work. But I didn’t come here to cry in a stranger’s bathroom—I came here to conquer this fear.
✽ ✽ ✽
I come back downstairs and sit back across from Alice, and she moves on, as if nothing has happened.
She is saying a lot of words, but they aren’t sinking in. It takes me a minute to hear them.
“You really aren’t special,” she tells me. “You’re not the center of the universe.”
Jesus.
I think I know what Alice is doing. She’s trying to tell me that no one is actually obsessed with my performance the way I am. Which I know is true. She’s right. But while I do overthink the audience’s reactions and my imperfections, I also constantly feel unspecial. That’s part of the problem. I don’t feel worthy enough to stand onstage and command an audience’s attention, so to have her say that I’m not special is just reinforcing that fear—that I’m an imposter, that I’m not good enough, that I don’t belong there, that I’m going to fail.
“Nobody cares if you fail,” Alice says.
I don’t agree. Meg will care. The audience will care. I will care, forever. There are stakes to me.
At this point, I just want to leave. I want to walk out of that house and keep walking forever.
And I do. I say I have to go; I leave Alice at the front door, and I walk and walk and walk. I’m five blocks away when I realize I’ve left my coat in her house and that I’ve gone in the opposite direction from the station.
