“Speak up!”

“Speak up!”

              If I had a dollar for every time I heard those words, I’d be a millionaire by now. We live in an extrovert world that bullies the quiet, the socially anxious. A world where the outspoken are celebrated and the reticent are shamed. A world that constantly attempts to coerce the coy out of their shell. A world where the vocal are the majority and the taciturn, the minority. A world that demands you be confident, or at least fake confidence in order to get everything you want out of life.

I’m not much of a conversationalist. I’m the kind of person who when an individual steps on my feet in public, I choose to overlook because I don’t want to cause a scene, I’d do anything to be out of the spotlight. Whether the person delivers an apology or not is irrelevant to me. What’s the half-hearted sorry going to do anyways? Take away the pain? This is someone I’m probably never going to see again. I’m the girl you’d find sitting awkwardly in a social setting because I’m overthinking what I should say. I’m the girl who would smile through inconvenience, trying not to upset anyone or be the centre of attention.

Life is hard, it’s even harder when you’re being misunderstood eighty percent of the time. When your silence is misconstrued as pride or impudence. When declining an invitation to an event is viewed as arrogance. When not knowing what to say is perceived as impoliteness.

“How could you be so rude? He was talking to you and you didn’t even acknowledge him with a reply?” she says. How then can I reply, “I didn’t know what to say” ?

When your very nature is seen as a glitch and who you are, anomalous. When a large percentage of the people you know try to cure you from your very essence. When being shy is childish and immature.

 Opportunities slip through your fingers because people take one look at you and deem you not good enough. Quietness is illegal and loudness is the currency.

Writing presents an acceptable outlet, I tell the things I really should say out loud.

While I might never be the girl who would embrace open confrontations, I might not be the girl who strides with confidence in her every step, I might shrivel in the spotlight and I might never give a speech in public without the fear of dropping dead.

I deserve equal chances as my vocal counterparts, quiet is not a defect.

I will speak up in the only way I know how, in the only way my voice is at its loudest- writing, because the pen is as mighty as the sword.

I’ll make sure that my silence is the loudest fucking thing in the room.

( Yours truly, seated in the back of a bus overthinking what pitch to call “Charlie boy”)



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