Hi Bob,

I am happy that it went so well with Samantha. Of course she didn't mention naturism at all or that she did yoga and Pilates nude with Essie.

What did you expect?

Remember when I said that women look at the whole relationship? Samantha doesn't have the same relationship with Essie and with your wife!

With Essie, the naturism was up in her face. There was no way around it. She spent 2 hours seeing my wife without any clothes at all, and so, the core of that relationship was set to be naturism.

When Christianity let them connect, it might have caused some level of connection in Samantha that Pilates solidified.

Linda and Samantha's first connection was at work, so of course, it will be different. And that's good!

Remember what Linda said. She has two objectives: avoid getting HR involved, and making a friend out of Samantha. Naturism isn't in Linda's map for that friendship.

So why did she open up about naturism to Samantha? Why did you open up about your trauma with me?

It's the same answer, really.

Just as you want to be accepted as you truly are, Linda also would like to be. Same for Essie.

The same for everyone.

I do too, but my problem is that what I need people to accept about me is mostly external.

Naturism is mostly from Essie. The extreme version we live in at least.

My job is external, the problems with Samantha aren't mine. It's like I am the vanilla ice cream compared to all of you guys.

Even Linda has a more interesting background than I do.

But I asked Essie "Do you have any idea what my own traumas are?"

She laughed. She said that she loved that I had to ask, because people with trauma certainly don't have to ask themselves about it.

Still, we came up with three of them. Two light ones, and one I try to suppress from my memories.

And I can't believe, but I will tell them to you...

My parents went to church every Sunday when I was a child and brought both my sister and me there. She liked it more than I did, but I followed more than she did. Perhaps it's why she liked it more...

We traveled to Vermont one summer. I think I was 9, but perhaps I was 10. We stayed at a naturist resort but found a historically significant compatible church nearby. This is something that appealed to my father a lot.

It was apparently built by the Roman Catholic Church in the 1800s, with huge stone foundations, but later sold of when maintenance was too heavy.

We stayed after the service. My father wanted to discuss architecture, and my mother was curious about the sermon. They spoke to the pastor, and he ended up giving up a tour, including of the basement.

I didn't know basements, so I was fascinated. Notably that a section of the basement was a crypt with the tombs of the past priests of the church.

I was mostly fascinated by the various decors stored on the tombs and between them, seeing the disassembled nativity scene or the giant cross for the Easter period. I did notice there was a door leading outside from the basement, so the side of the church. It's like it was built on a hill, and on one side, there was a direct exit.

As an adult, I do realize that the chairs in the basement were most likely for AA meetings or other such organizations and they would enter via the basement.

The pastor even let us visit the attic of the church, where more decors were stored. We were, in my mind, hundreds of feet in the air, but it wasn't that big of a church, and it's not like we could see below the floor, but to the young boy I was, this felt magical.

There was a barbecue in the parking lot, so we attended, with activities for the kids. I met other kids and even had fun with them. Unlike the church we went to, they didn't try to teach us anything like a Sunday school. Perhaps it was a holiday?

A kid proposed to play hide-and-seek. We asked for rules, and hiding inside the church was allowed.

I knew where I wanted to hide: in the crypt!

So, I ran inside, with a few of the kids, while my sister picked a wooded area on the other side of the parking lot.

We split apart, and I found the door leading downstairs.

I ran to the crypt but discovered that the door was locked. I only had the meeting room and there were no places to hide in it. All the cabinets had padlocks, and restrooms were declared off limit for being gendered.

So, I ran back upstairs, only to discover that you could push the bar to open the door to go downstairs but not to go back upstairs.

Great. Therefore, I opened the door to the side of the church, at least it led to the parking lot where my parents were and not to the field where the searchers counted.

Perhaps I could find a better place outside, if only by my sister's side.

Only... once I was in the little vestibule, the door closed behind me, and the door in front of me... didn't budge. I wouldn't open it, I couldn't figure out how to unlock it from the inside.

I did see a keyway, but aren't keyways supposed to be outside?

I turned, and to my horror, the door behind me was also locked: I was stuck between the two doors.

Well, I won at hide-and-seek as all the local kids knew that the basement was a one-way trip without an adult.

I spent what felt like hours in that little non-air-conditioned area smaller than my closet.

I was saved by the pastor, who came at the request of kids who spotted me yelling my lungs out and banging on the security window above the door. Fortunately, I was tall enough to be seen.

Well, apparently, I was only gone for a few minutes so no one was really searching for me. Well, no adults. The seekers were...

Apparently, the door is locked because people would steal from the church back area while the pastor wasn't looking and run to the basement and escape via the side door.

Now, it's nothing like what you lived, and it's my top one!

The second worst one is from the same vacation! That was a rough week. I still have good memories, don't worry, but two traumatic ones.

Now, remember, this was a naturist vacation... I was on an inflatable raft on the lake beside the naturist resort. It wasn't a private lake. We had a cordonned off area to stick with.

Well, the wind picked up and a storm front moved and I drifted away and was soon enough soaked in a heavy downpour.

I was nude, on a raft, drifting away on a lake I was told not to get fully on, and I was cold!

To make matters worse, I couldn't see anything around me, but I knew I was drifting as I could spot trees moving slowly around me.

Now, I didn't get huge traumas, so when the rain lowered, I was still in the middle of nowhere, so I just used the raft as a floating board and swam back to the resort.

This time, my parents were the ones panicking, and I was the one calm. Well, once the rain stopped.

My third one... is even easier to explain. I was in high school. A girl I knew, Kathy, was almost becoming a friend. I admit, I was hoping for more, but I didn't have much chance: she was way out of my league!

I know you joked that Essie is out of my league, but Kathy was way out of mine.

So, after a PE class finished early, Kathy and I were walking back to our lockers. I was fortunate enough to have mine next to hers.

We were joking around, I even got a few laughs from her. She was smiling, and I could almost imagine that my sense of humor and our proximity would be just enough to get some attention from her.

We stopped at our lockers. I began entering my combination, but she just stood there. Not moving. I asked her is she was ok, and she fell face forward in her locker door.

I jumped into action and managed to get ahold of her before she collapsed on the ground.

There was no need to yell for help, a school security officer was already calling for an ambulance on his radio while running toward us.

"She just collapsed, like that," I said.

"I saw"

I held her until the paramedic arrived, but after the bell rang and everyone got out of class and a bubble of people surrounded us. At first, strangers, but soon enough, Kathy's friends.

There was crying, a few yelled. One asked me what I had done. I couldn't speak.

The paramedic took her, and a few days later, I was at the funeral parlor with my family. I wasn't close enough as a friend to be invited, but I was the guy who held her while her life was draining away.

I was the last one to talk to her, because a brain aneurysm burst in her head, killing her, but not at once. It's like her body gave up gradually. First the ability to move, then to keep balance and finally, to stand up.

Her parents asked me questions, and I think I helped them get some closure.

The only person who never got closure was me... Because that aneurysm stole any resolution of whether Kathy would even go out with me or not.

At least I got Essie. But I will never know if I could have had a life with Kathy or not.

Right, that got heavy. But you can see I am not without trauma, mine are just, well, spontaneous.

I got locked for a few minutes in an entryway. I got lost on an inflatably raft during a storm and got back. Finally, I lost a girl I fancied as she died in my arms.

Sorry it got that heavy...

Still, nothing compared to your own trauma, but even a vanilla guy like me has some little hardened ice crystalls that don't quite go down easily.

However I do have a point. It's clear to Essie and me from the time spent with her that Samantha has her own trauma. With time, we might even get to learn what they are.

But that's the secret to everything: time.

I am ok, because my own traumas were short snippets of time, and they all occurred relatively a long time ago.

Your trauma lasted a long time, but you are increasing the distance between the last breath taken under its grasp and your current peaceful life.

We don't know what Samantha went through, but perhaps, with time, we will know. She promised to come back to see Essie for more yoga and Pilates.

And she went to your home. It's clear she wants friendship. If we are patient and give her time, we might change our group from two couples to a group of friends!

Your friend,

Peter