Still today, I’ll sit in a classroom, or any group setting for that matter, knowing without a doubt that I have a response to a question that has just been posed, but for some reason the words fall flat. I cannot describe my reaction, my perspective, and my thoughts through speech. I am left ashamed and frustrated, once again, at my inability to “speak up.”
The most wonderful part of writing is when it seems like my fingertips take on a conscience of their own. It is no longer my mind informing and creating the phrases on the page but the words themselves changing and affecting my thoughts. I enjoy writing the most when something that I produced, something that supposedly began inside of me, stares back at me and changes me, thus fueling its own creation.
It is strange that something I perceive to be so personal cannot be accomplished without a tool outside of my body. Perhaps the pen and the keyboard offer the precise separation I need between myself and the rest of world to make sense of the thoughts spinning within my head. Maybe the manipulation of that tool is an extension of the sense of control I feel when I communicate through writing.
Verbal communication is something that I will continue to try and improve on as long as it is a struggle for me. But, in a way, I am thankful for how this crippling weakness drove me toward writing with the passion that it did. If it weren't for the countless time I chose pen over podium, maybe I wouldn't be able to speak the words today "I love to write."
Final Draft
Why I Write
I sit there, writing a script for my next sound in my head, fearing to open my mouth before knowing the last word that will come out.
My decision to seldom speak is not because I do not have something to say, though I do think that something can be said for choosing to listen more often than to speak. I remain silent because of the mental preparation that goes into each public utterance.
I am not a speaker. This much was evident when I was five years old jumping around on the playground meeting other kids. “This is my little sister. Her name is Shaylyn. She doesn’t talk much,” was one of my sister’s go-to lines.
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I never felt the need to speak in school. I would talk when I had a simple answer, not necessarily an elaborate response. But as time went on, constantly being told to “speak up” and “come out of my shell” started to wear on me. I would often write specific talking points on an assigned reading the night before class, hoping that the opportunity would arise to use them naturally the next day.
I sit there, writing a script for my next sound in my head, fearing to open my mouth before knowing the last word that will come out. I fear inaccuracy - trapped between two evils of gasping, quite literally, for the next word that so often eludes my thoughts mid-talking and successfully grasping a word within a breath's notice but not the exact one I wanted. I fear being misunderstood, of not having the opportunity to clarify my intention, and not being able to express myself the way I want to altogether.
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Writing is different. There's no stumbling or stuttering. Writing allows me the time and space to learn about what I think about things that are going on around me, and then present those ideas in the clearest way possible.
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That's not to say I do not speak at all. I have always respected great speakers – the ones who flawlessly string words together on the fly, developing their thoughts even deeper as they proceed, rarely stumbling over vocabulary, over syntax. Given the choice, however, it is not my preferred method of communication.
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I have tried to improve this skill. I participated in Model UN in high school, a brutal program that could leave you standing at the front of a room of a hundred peers forced to come up with a one minute speech on solutions to the global water crisis or the merits of canned peanut butter on any given day. I learned a lot in that class, but probably would have developed more as a speaker if I didn’t religiously write out and memorize every planned speech before delivering it.
I turned to writing as a form of self-empowerment. Writing afforded me the ability to present the best, most articulate version of myself, and gave me the time to ensure the precision of each thought expressed.
If it weren't for the countless times I chose pen over podium, maybe I wouldn't be able to speak the words today 'I love to write' .
Above all, as someone who spends a lot of time mulling over thoughts in my head as opposed to deciphering them out loud, writing gave me an outlet for those thoughts - in a way that is comfortable, and even enjoyable, for me.
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The act of writing is the journey of words through my body and into the world through the tips of my fingers. The somatization of thoughts into physical movements that create lines, dots, and curves that transform those thoughts into words may be one of the most intimate, purposeful connections between mind and body achievable.
I started to write for the school newspaper, offering opinions and personal insights on topics that I would have never have spoken out loud. I wrote to tell the stories of others that I thought deserved to be heard, finding a way to use my written voice to empower others as well. I couldn’t make people listen to me, but people read what I wrote, and they liked it.