Soft-Spoken

by Milena Kozlowska

One of my earliest memories is awash in the bright fluorescent lights of a preschool classroom, surrounded by bold blocky colors and the smell of Elmer's glue. I sat with my legs crissed-crossed on the colorful squares of the carpet, in the center of a cluster of other students. From her chair in the front of the classroom, my teacher asked me a question.

The details have long since faded from my mind. All I remember is the heat of the other kids' eyes on my neck as I stared ahead, unable to answer. Instead, I shrugged. The teacher prodded me for an answer; the kids around me tittered. Fear cemented my silence. I shrugged again. Frozen, I couldn't speak. Instead, I chewed on my lip, peeling all the skin off.

I never spoke. My teachers grew frustrated with me. I would whisper in the ear of my best friend Talia during recess, but otherwise I stayed silent.

Talia tried to persuade me to talk to her other friends. You can whisper to them too, she said. I shook my head and stared down at the woodchips, hiding behind a curtain of long blonde hair. I could speak to my parents and siblings at home because they already knew me. But around everyone else, my throat closed up. My voice fled.

Silence sheltered me. I built walls around my inner world like a fortress. As if I could escape by making myself as small and still and silent as possible.

In kindergarten, all the kids sat in a circle and the teachers led us in song and dance. I never opened my mouth or moved my hands, just watched the other kids.

After class, I went to the bathroom at my house and climbed up onto the sink. There were multiple mirrors, so I could see dozens of versions of myself spreading beyond me, one after another after another after another. Surrounded by reflections, I went through all the moves we'd learned in class, sang the songs under my breath. All versions of me sang and danced along.

Only in that white-tiled world, with its expansive mirrors stretching infinitely on, could I speak. In the classroom, I could only watch. Silence paralyzed me. Like a princess trapped in a tower, I couldn’t break down the walls of my own fortress. Even when I longed to.

Teachers thought I had a developmental disorder, at first. Then I was diagnosed with selective mutism. My mom took me to see a speech therapist, a woman who sat next to me on the floor with stacks of colorful pictures. As my trust in her slowly grew, I started being able to whisper answers to her questions.

Eventually, I'd been in speech therapy for long enough that I could answer direct questions if prompted. Teachers were no longer frustrated. They liked that I was quiet, polite. I didn't raise my voice or interrupt others or goof off like other kids. I kept my head down and my mouth closed and was praised for it. Meanwhile, I chewed up my lips til they were sore, scratched at my scalp till it bled, clenched my jaw till it ached. Bit my nails down to stubs, then dug them through skin already red and raw with eczema.

On worksheets, I wrote in tiny handwriting, the letters as small as I could make them. As if I was trying to make myself as small as possible, disappear between the pages.

Silence stifled me. I felt like I could scream, and no one would hear behind the walls.

By high school, I was speaking: shy, but no longer clinically so. At my waitressing job, cooks snapped at me for calling out orders too quietly. Whenever he saw me trying to get a cook's attention, one of my coworkers would give me a look of sympathy and ask my order, before shouting it to the kitchen himself. "Thanks," I'd say with an abashed smile.

"Why do you talk like that?" one of the cooks asked me once, in his thick accent. "You always whisper." I'd ordered food for one of the residents, and he was piling the mushy vegetables onto a plate.

"This is just my voice," I said as he handed me the plate.

"No, it isn't."

I laughed nervously and left to serve the food. Heat flared somewhere in the back of my throat. I'm not whispering. This is my voice.

What if it wasn't? What if my real voice was still stuck somewhere I couldn't reach it? What if I'd buried it somewhere in the wood chips of my preschool playground and it was gone forever?

Still, I liked some things about being quiet. I liked that people told me things they wouldn't tell others, that people called me a good listener, that most of my life was hidden, that I could keep a little mystery, a little distance. Silence protected me, both as my weapon and my refuge. Behind its walls, I could observe others without being seen, or known.

But when I started college, I wanted to be someone else. I wanted to leave the mute girl behind, somewhere on the outskirts of a school playground with her knees drawn to her chest. I tried to outgrow her, outrun her, in a new place where no one would start off already knowing me as the quiet girl. I joined rugby, a sport where I had to shout at the top of my lungs. I raised my hand in classes. I placed myself in social situations as often as possible, surrounded myself with people. I shaved my head so that I couldn't hide behind my hair anymore, even if I tried.

And yet. And yet. People still kept asking me to repeat myself, became frustrated with my voice. I'm sorry, I said, over and over again. I know I'm a little soft-spoken. No matter how often I tried to raise my voice, that never seemed to change.

Silence found me, again and again and again. I tried to knock down the stone walls that wrapped around my vocal cords, but I could only ever break away parts of them. The rest crumbled into rocks in my throat: I could speak, but it was never easy. It loosened its hold in me, but I could never escape it completely.

And yet. At one time, silence kept me safe. In some ways, it still does. It has been with me so long, I don’t know who I’d be without it.

It’s a part of me— for better or worse.

Milena is a third-year student at Northeastern University majoring in behavioral neuroscience. In her free time, she enjoys painting, reading, writing, and playing rugby.