Being the quiet one is not all it’s cracked up to be. Sometimes it’s downright awful. On many occasions, my dog Sawyer was the only one in my life who treated me with quiet kindness and respected what I needed at any given moment. Without him, everything has become much more difficult, especially as many humans have gotten worse since he died. I keep mostly to myself at this point because it’s so hard to find any human who will interact with me in ways I like and because it’s so easy to find many who will make me feel bad. Here are some issues I’ve dealt with, whether they were only in the past or are still ongoing.
- Finding out everything I don’t want to know. I don’t know why, but acquaintances and strangers alike have shared some incredibly personal things with me, sometimes within minutes of our first meeting. There have been a lot of long monologues about things they hate, intimate details about major health problems (often shared while I’m eating, which can easily make me lose my appetite), everything they hate about me, and private information about others who aren’t around to defend themselves or at least hear what’s being said about them behind their backs. It’s amazing how many people will say anything and everything that pops into their head, with no apparent regard for the effect it has on anyone else or if anyone else wants to hear it.
- Hardly getting a chance to speak. I’ve lost track of how many times someone has rambled on endlessly while I had countless things to say building up inside me, and, when I finally got a turn, I barely got 10 seconds in before someone who had just talked for anywhere from 5 minutes to half an hour or longer cut me off and started rambling again. On a similar note, someone I was once close to, who routinely took 5 minutes to tell a 30 second story, said to me “Long story short” after I took 30 seconds to tell a 30 second story, as if I had wasted huge swaths of her time. Sometimes I say “Yeah” to show agreement with what someone has just said before I say what I’m thinking but then they start talking again before I can say anything I had planned to say. It’s rare that anyone asks for my thoughts in casual conversation since they’re used to me saying little and seem to think that I never have much to say. In reality, I have a lot to say when discussing subjects I find meaningful, but it almost always takes me some time to organize my thoughts. However, I rarely get to contribute much to those conversations since the other person almost always starts talking during a quiet pause, either before I’ve got my words straight or right as soon as I’m ready to speak. They’re more interested in filling me up with all of their opinions on everything under the sun and sometimes using me as an involuntary, unpaid therapist than getting a glimpse into how I see the world.
- Tons of negative assumptions from others. They might think I’m interested in what they’re saying because I’m not interrupting, changing the subject, or disagreeing, so they talk at length about things I don’t care at all about because I lack the courage to speak up. This, in conjunction with the previous point, is where some get the idea that I’m a good listener. I might be better at listening now than I once was, but that doesn’t mean I want to do nothing but listen in a conversation. They also tend to assume that I don’t care about something if I don’t have a huge, immediate visual reaction to it (even when I do care but just need time to process what was said before responding), or that I dislike them if we’ve just met when I’m actually just on edge around most new folks I meet. The assumption I hate the most is that I’m implying something bad by asking a simple question. I don’t hide insults or judgments inside questions that sound innocuous but are actually devious. When I ask a question, I’m asking that question, nothing more. I often feel flabbergasted at how much someone can assume I’m implying with what I say. That always suggests to me that they’ve got self-image and pride problems to sort through. If I meet someone and we get to know each other over several interactions, they’ll gradually see how I truly am. However, if we only ever interact once, they may walk away thinking I’m awful, empty inside, or something else negative.
- So much pressure to conform. So many people try to get me to speak at their pace rather than mine and pressure me to respond immediately to questions that require deep thought (folks want 10 second answers to questions that would take minutes to properly answer). This applies to other conversational aspects as well. If someone asks, “What do you do?” and I start talking about my hobbies, they almost always interrupt and say “No, I mean what do you do for work?” This shows that they have no interest in what I enjoy doing in my free time, no concern for anything other than the specific information they’re seeking, and also no respect for me by interrupting me while I’m still talking. Some people don’t stop interrupting me even when I continue speaking or say “Hang on”, and others don’t give me room to speak at length even when I literally ask for it. I long for conversations that make everyone involved better off, not ones that make some better off and others worse off. Yet so often, I’ve ended up interacting with someone who seems interested solely in what they can get out of the conversation, not in how the conversation can benefit us both.
- There’s little to no space to just be. If nature abhors a vacuum, then humans abhor it more. When I swing dance at the Volstead, I like to sit out during the last song and watch everyone dancing while thinking about Sawyer. Often, somebody will see me sitting by myself, come over, and start up small talk with me. I usually go along with it but sometimes I’ll say something along the lines of “We’ll talk after the song ends.” Similarly, if I’m enjoying a quiet pause in a conversation and have nothing to say, it’s almost impossible to find someone who will also enjoy the pause. Most will say something just to fill a silence that is uncomfortable for them, and they’ll pressure me to respond even when I can think of literally nothing to say. This has only gotten worse the more I’ve gotten into my mindfulness and presence practices.
- Hardly ever taken seriously. Few people seem to be interested in listening to what the “man of few words” has to say when he does speak. I’ll often tell someone the same thing on multiple occasions (the correct name of a juggling move, that I *do* enjoy reading fiction, etc.) and they either don’t bother to remember it or they don’t believe me. This is especially the case with controversial subjects, in which they often immediately dismiss what I’ve said without asking any questions to get more information or simply giving it a moment’s thought. Other times I’ll provide a solution to a problem, get ignored, and then (sometimes) later get credit for it, although that never seems to enhance anyone’s trust of me in future situations. On a handful of occasions when attempting to understand what someone else was saying, I put it into my own words and asked if that’s correct. They said “No”, and then repeated verbatim what I said. I usually don’t say much in those cases, but, when I’ve felt extra frustrated, I’ve said, “That’s what I said” or “That’s what I just said.” I don’t understand how I can put so much effort into being clear yet so often be misunderstood.
- I get almost nothing to myself. So many folks make everything I say about them. It’s incredibly rare that someone will strive to understand how I’m feeling instead of saying “I know what you mean. I feel the same way because of…” This irks me because I’m still dealing with deep pain from a young age of bringing up a concern, someone taking offense, and making it all about them while ignoring what I was feeling, wanting, and needing, usually while also punishing me in some way. Additionally, when I express upset over how someone is treating me, whoever I’m talking to seems more interested in assuming how that person might be feeling and what their motivations might be than in asking me how I’m feeling about it. They’re trying to identify some of the emotions involved, but not mine. That makes me think that they don’t care how I feel, and it’s one reason I tend to keep to myself when I feel bad (the main reason being that I’ve gotten good enough at working through my emotions that I don’t need to seek out others to do this).