An ode to shutting the fuck up: My week of silence

Iwouldn’t go so far as to say that I was mute. But for all of preschool, I did not speak.

And when I think back, I can’t exactly remember why. A silent person is infinite, endless possibilities live inside their zipped lips. But to the outside world, I could be simply summed up with one word: shy. From ever-expanding to monosyllabic, infinite to shy.

What a small, ugly word. I was captured inside its inflexible constraints all throughout elementary and middle school. But during high school, I learned how to take up space — how to push against the sides of that tiny box and speak. I learned the difference between quiet and shy: All shy people are quiet, but not all quiet people are shy. I am quiet, I decided. A contraposition. A contradiction.

To the untrained eye, the only tangible diff