I was rereading a review written about me twelve years ago. Hanna noted that I showed nervousness when we first met. It stopped me —not because it was harsh, but because it echoed something Harley Angel said about our first dance.
Apparently, my nervousness shows up in my hands.
I can’t quite explain where it comes from, or why it appears when it does. It’s not the nervousness of a teenage version of me —not the Texan boy who couldn’t bring himself to ask out a girl he knew was interested, or the shy Trini kid with a quiet crush on the daughter of my parents’ friends. Those versions make sense to me.
This feels different.
Maybe it’s about first impressions. Maybe it’s about not wanting to be seen too clearly, too quickly. About someone noticing the cracks before I’ve decided which ones I’m ready to share.
I’ve felt it before big moments: giving a speech at my sister’s wedding —with a magic trick as an assist, no less. My first magic performance in front of seasoned magicians. Interviews here and there. All moments where I’m exposed in some way.
But women? That’s a whole different ballgame, even though I played enough.
That’s where the nervousness leaks out through touch. Through hesitation. Through hands that don’t quite know where to rest.
I don’t have a tidy answer for it. Maybe I don’t need one. Maybe noticing it is enough. Naming it without judging it. Understanding that confidence and nervousness can exist in the same body at the same time.
Maybe those nervous hands aren’t a flaw after all.
Maybe they’re just a signal that I care. That something matters.
I used to think growth meant becoming fearless. Now I think it means being present even when the fear shows up uninvited.
And for now, I’ll just note this: my hands sometimes betray what my words try to hide.
And maybe that, too, is a kind of honesty.
This journey is teaching me that I don’t need to conquer every trembling moment or explain every quiet insecurity. I only need to decide how I move forward with them beside me.
The nervousness, the uncertainty, the vulnerability they are all part of the time I’ve been given, part of the story still unfolding. I can spend that time hiding them, or I can spend it living fully despite them.
More and more, I am choosing to step forward anyway, hands unsteady perhaps, but open to whatever comes next.
“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”
—The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)