A personal essay

Abnormal

Why Are You So Quiet?

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Someone called me abnormal today. They said, “You don’t speak much, you’re always quiet, and you watch the world instead of running through it like everyone else”. I didn’t argue. What would be the point? I just smiled; the kind of smile that makes people stop asking questions.

They don’t get it. The pauses, the hesitations, the awkward silences that appear like unfinished sentences — they’re not because I want to be mysterious or rude or aloof. It’s because sometimes my mouth forgets how to move. Or maybe it’s my brain that forgets how to translate the mess inside into something coherent.

“Why are you so quiet?” they ask.

What should I say? That every time I open my mouth, I feel like the world is waiting to pounce on the wrong syllable? That I rehearse conversations a thousand times in my head, yet they fall apart when it matters?

So, I just shrug. “I don’t know.”

They call me odd because I sit at the back of the room. The noise isn’t so loud back there, and the eyes don’t reach as far. I hear them — laughing, talking, living — but it feels safer from a distance. I’m not lonely. Not really…