Chapters:

Nobody Talks

Around four years old, a woman who pestered me to play games with her in a tiny room diagnosed me with Selective Mutism, an anxiety disorder rendering me unable to communicate in certain social situations. This therapist then lied to my mother, out of ignorance, telling her I would simply "grow out of it."

My mom didn't even think to mention the diagnosis to me until a decade later, when I still hadn't "grown out of it." Until then, I'd gone through life believing I was simply a freak. Everyone else could talk, why couldn't I? 

I tried to explain it once to one of my best friends, after I'd grown comfortable enough to be able to talk incessantly with her.

"It's like my mouth refuses to listen to my brain. It just won't open, no matter how many times I tell it to let the words out. My vocal chords get frozen or something."

Over the years, I developed many of my own coping mechanisms, one being to plaster an Everlasting Gobstopper of a smile on my face in the hopes people would stop assuming my silence meant I hated them.

I managed to have one best friend almost every school year. Whoever she was, she would often become my voice, sticking up to bullies for me, explaining how "shy" I was to teachers or other students. These friends were often outcasts. The new kid, the kid with obvious disabilities, the smelly kid, the other "quiet" kid, or the kids who were nobodies due simply to clique-ish meanness.

Sometimes, my best friends would transition into a larger group of friends and I could tag along for a while, going to slumber parties, dances, being one of the giggling girls claiming the whole back row of a movie theater.

But because I could only feel comfortable talking to whoever my best friend was in these groups, she'd often get fed up with my clinginess. My friendships would end, either in an fizzle of avoidance or in an explosion of, "You're not attached to my hip Desiree, no matter how much you think you're a leg, so just leave me alone! "

Barely comfortable talking with girls, I was never comfortable talking with boys. I figured I'd never get married; maybe never even date, especially since boys either hated me, ignored me, and/or thought I hated them.

I did consider marriage once though. One Sunday, when I was twelve, the Sunday school teacher had to scour the building for more chairs after a startling number of youth showed up.

As I looked around the cacophonous room, I noticed every single person was conversing with their neighbors, except for me and one boy. He was sitting on the floor in the corner, partially hidden behind his well-worn backpack, drawing in a notebook. Watching him sketch, I thought, "If I were ever to marry anyone, it would be him."

Simply because he was quiet and I was quiet and everyone else was LOUD.

But it was a fleeting thought.

Over the years, this quiet boy, Jeff, became friends with my siblings. When I was fifteen, one of them invited Jeff to see a Star Wars exhibit at the Boston Science Museum. I'd only seen Episode I, which did not turn me into a Star Wars fan, but I didn't want to stay home alone that day, so I invited myself along.

My younger siblings were quite the outcasts. Most people couldn't stand them at that point in time, especially people at church.
But Jeff? He treated them like people, like friends. As we rode past the Rainbow Swash heading back home, me in the passenger's seat and him sitting between my younger siblings in the back, the three of them cracking jokes, I knew I'd fallen in love.

Simply because he accepted my siblings as the people they were.

But of course, my love would forever be unrequited, because I couldn't talk to him.

Then Myspace became a thing.

I soon discovered I could use my voice, at least a little, online. I filled out silly surveys about myself and took countless selfies, back before they were called selfies. I giddily hacked up my typed words and replaced some of them with numbers. (Thankfully, that habit hasn't lasted 4eva.) I felt like I was a real live teenager after all, not just a quiet book worm masquerading as a human. 

A few months later, Jeff got on Myspace and I sent him a friend request, followed by a message saying, "Hi."

We soon began messaging each other, staying up til midnight sometimes, incessantly refreshing our inboxes.

One December day, I posted a survey with some laughable title like, "For boys only." The questions were about whether the respondent found me cute, wanted to hug me, so on. I didn't expect any one would answer, but I hoped a certain someone would.

Jeff messaged me, saying he had thought about answering it, then thought better of it. Eventually, he did answer it, after I promised not to read his responses until he'd logged off.
We had our first kiss two weeks later, under a mulberry tree in my back yard. 

Since then, I've befriended all manner of people; some I've never met face-to-face, and some I've known since kindergarten, but could never talk to. An old bully even apologized to me via PM on facebook a few years ago. I just liked his new profile picture, which shows him cutting the cord connecting his newborn daughter to his beloved girlfriend.

I've also joined support groups on Facebook for all the difficult things affecting me, including Selective Mutism. I'm able to see myself reflected in these strangers' words. They know what it is like when people think you are quiet because of stubbornness, or hatred, or arrogance, when really it is because of anxiety. They know the frustration of forced silence. They know the panic at the mere thought of picking up a telephone.

They also know the misconception of "growing out of it" still persists in the minds of many professionals working with SM children today, even though anxiety isn't typically something you magically "grow out of." It took me two months to work up the nerve to get my car's inspection sticker and I just had my twenty-fifth birthday.

For my sixteenth birthday, my parents took me to the house of Emily Dickinson, a particularly well-known nobody. Throughout the tour, my mom kept whispering to me, "She sounds just like you."

At the end of the tour, the group gathered under a large white oak tree to read some of Emily's poems aloud.

I was the last to read my assigned poem, and when I finished, the tour guide smiled and said, "You read that just like Emily would've. Softly."

I sometimes wonder who I'd be right now without Internet access. I imagine I'd be much like Emily, hiding behind doors when there's company, writing poems I share only with a select few, sending a basket down to neighborhood children.

Emily spoke to the world through her posthumously published poetry. I'm able to speak with the world through technology. I just presented at a symposium last month via Skype, I'm submitting and publishing my writing online, and just today, I took my son to the park with my husband, Jeff.