Shattered Silence

Benjamin Franklin wrote this about the virtue of silence: “Speak not but what may benefit yourself or others. Avoid trifling conversation.” This adage more or less sums up my personality, both for the better and for the worse. I have been a woman of few words for as long as I can remember, so much so that I was held back in pre-school because I never talked to my classmates or my teachers. According to my dad’s sister, who still lives in my hometown of Binghamton, New York, my earliest schoolteachers still remember me because I was so quiet and shy. I find it interesting that I’ve left a mark on people’s lives by doing nothing at all. Most remarkable people have at least left a few memorable quotations in their wake. I suppose I am a special case, because I cannot say the same about myself.

My taciturn ways have given me difficulties over the years. It has always been hard for me to build and maintain friendships. When I was a kid, I preferred to keep to myself, often reading rather than playing with my peers. As middle school and high school came and went, things didn’t change much. I wasn’t hated, but I wasn’t popular, either. Everyone else would trade inside jokes with their friends, would have their own special group of people that they hung out with, would almost constantly see each other outside of school, always chose each other for kickball teams and other games while I was the last one called, etc.

My friends through those years were anyone who would talk to me. I will never forget how I met one of my closest friends to this day, Maria Nicholson. It was my sophomore year of high school. I had a few classes with her best friend Jenny. Before the first bell rang each school morning, she and Jenny would sit along the edge of the hallway and chatter about who knows what to pass time. Both of them would often say hi to me as I walked by. I didn’t remember meeting Maria before, but politely said hello anyways. One morning when she greeted me I worked up the nerve to ask her where she knew me from. She chuckled and replied, “We don’t know each other. Jenny’s told me about you. My name’s Maria by the way.” I said “It’s nice to meet you Maria. I hope Jenny has been saying nice things about me.” She giggled again, assured me that she had heard good things about me, and we’ve been friends ever since.

Maria and other people who befriended me during those years couldn’t relate to how painful it was to freeze up during a social situation; to have more awkward silences than words spoken in a typical conversation with someone else, as if the other person had fired a tranquilizer dart directly at my vocal chords the moment they opened their mouth to talk to me; to want to get to know other people so badly, but to be too insecure and hesitant to initiate friendships. But Maria and others like her accepted me and reached out to me, and for that I will always be thankful. I don’t know how I would’ve made it through school without them.

I still have some regrets leftover from this period in my life. A few years ago, my freshman year of college, I went to my high school’s Homecoming football game. A lot of old classmates were home on their Fall Breaks. I ran into them during halftime. They were there palling around with their old buddies, just as they always had. They courteously said hello to me, asking me how I was doing, but I could sense the huge difference in the way they interacted with each other versus how they interacted with me. They were just comfortable with each other, almost as family members were. Upon seeing this it dawned on me that I had blown so many opportunities to just take an interest in other people’s lives, or make any small step towards overcoming my shyness.

Around middle school, my teachers pointed out to me that I had a knack for writing. My eighth grade teacher, Mr. Langley, was especially an inspiration to me. He had a love for literature and the arts, and could sense that same love in me. He said my writing ability was a gift to be cherished, polished, and used often. Up until I met him, I never knew how deep my love for the written word was. I had been a bookworm since I learned how to read, but this was a turning point for me. From then until now, writing was and still is my primary form of self-expression.

When I write, it is the only time I feel that I can be 100 percent myself. If, when I am writing, I cannot figure out how to share my thoughts, there are no social consequences for my failures. It is equally frustrating, but at least I know I will not be rejected or stared at like an insect for having writer’s block; whereas if I am with others and words escape me, I stand out like a sore thumb. When I write, I don’t have to worry about what others think of me. I don’t have to hold any thing back. If, when I write, people don’t like what I have to say, they can refuse to read my works. I’d never know it, and what I don’t know can’t bother me. My thoughts just flow and I can communicate whatever feelings or thoughts I want to.

The first time I was published I was in 10th grade. Nashville’s newspaper, the Tennessean, prints what is called a “3-star letter” in the Letters to the Editor section of its Op/Ed page. Each day, after reading through the Letters to the Editor received on a given day, the editor chooses one letter that he thinks is the best one and sets it off with 3 stars in the next day’s paper.  I had written a 3-star letter on issues pertaining to education, saying that if a teacher can control his or her classroom, and the students’ parents see to it that their kids are well-behaved, it improves the learning atmosphere for everyone involved. I was surprised to see it printed, especially as a 3-star letter, and even more surprised when I received an invitation in the mail to attend a banquet honoring all people who had written 3 star letters within the past year. It was held at the Maxwell House Hotel in May 2006. There were a few hundred people attending, and I was the second-youngest guest at 16 years old. The keynote speaker, former Tennessean editor Everett Mitchell, spoke to us about the importance of raising issues in our community that we felt passionate about, and encouraged us to continue writing. His speech made me realize that what I have to say matters and that I have important things to tell others.

This sentiment was re-affirmed my junior year of high school. It was a rough year for me and the other kids in my grade. A well-liked classmate of ours, Kevin Zoccola, had ended his life about 3 weeks into the school year for unknown reasons, and it was devastating. When news of his passing broke out, everyone was dumbstruck, myself included. I wanted to do or say anything to lift my friends up during this difficult time, but was at a loss. I ended up submitting a guest column to our school newspaper a few months later saying that we would make it through this tragedy. Many people, teachers and students alike, complimented me on it. I was glad that my words brought hope to those struggling to come to terms with what had happened. The following year, as a senior, I earned a spot on the newspaper staff and continued to get praise for my articles.

When it came time for me to go to college I was torn between majoring in English and journalism. I was a journalism major when I first came to Belmont so that I would have a career path laid out for me when I graduated. But I switched to English after despising my first news writing class. Having to learn the Associated Press standards for spelling, grammar, and punctuation made me feel as though I was being taught how to write all over again, and I didn’t want to learn new rules for telling others what was happening in the world around me.

In any case, no matter what field of study I pursued, I knew that I still wanted to write. Writing is how I make my contribution to the world, even if it is small. William Faulkner said in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech that “[Man] is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.”

As an aspiring writer, it is my greatest wish to do likewise. I want my life to be more than “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,” as the Shakespearean character Macbeth stated so eloquently. I cannot count how many times I have been that idiot, saying anything just for the sake of talking, rather than risking being ostracized or questioned for saying nothing at all. I know I have more to offer than that. I write because I am convinced that the pen is indeed mightier than the sword; that any word originating in the inner recesses of the soul can cut through the white noise droning across the airwaves and touch the core of what it means to be human, in all its splendor and wretchedness; that it can seal the bonds of affection between friends, kinfolk, and lovers across nations, oceans, and the expanse of time. I write because I believe that the greatest weapon against despair is a single sentence uttered out of love. I write because the relativistic age we abide in makes it all too easy to throw words around, thus rendering them meaningless. I write because the heart aches to be consumed by beauty rather than the drivel issuing from the mouths of the Jersey Shore cast. And I write to share these thoughts with you: my audience. Upon meeting me you will notice that I am still usually reticent and reserved, but my pen speaks on my behalf; and because I can write, my silence is shattered.