The secret beneath my shyness
The classroom was unusually quiet for a Wednesday morning. Mrs. Lilian stood at the front with her clipboard. She adjusted her glasses as she took the roll call. One by one, my classmates made their way to the front, read from their note cards, and returned to their seats with relief.
The she said my name.
"Jonathan. You're up."
I felt this tension within me.
I had rehearsed this moment over and over in my room the night before. Standing in front of my mirror, whispering the lines I had written about "My greatest influence". But rehearsing in front of the mirror is one thing; standing in front of thirty pairs of eyes is another.
I dragged my feet as I made my way to the front, holding my folded paper in my hands. When I turned around, the classroom, all I could see were faces staring back at me, some of them with expectations while some were a bit distracted. I knew the kind of classmates I have, any little flop and they won't hesitate to burst out in laughter that would make someone just want to bury himself at the spot.
I was the shy kid. The quiet one. The boy who barely spoke, except when forced to or spoken to.
I slowly opened my paper and stared at the words I had memorizes. "My Greatest Influence".
I could already began to hear a little of chuckling around the back seats of the classroom. Instead of following the script, I began to speak from the heart.
"You want to know why I'm so quiet? Why I can't just stand here and talk like the rest of you?"
The class went silent. Even Mrs Lilian looked surprised.
I wasn't supposed to say that. None of this was supposed to happen. But the words just kept coming out after the other.
"It's not because I don't have anything to say," I said. "It's because when I was nine years old, my dad told me my voice didn't matter."
The whole class seemed to be paying attention now. I continued.
"I was trying to tell him about a drawing I made. He was on the phone, busy, stressed, and I kept talking. He turned towards me angrily and yelled at me to shut up. He said no one wanted to hear my nonsense, you can imagine that. He said if I wanted people to listen, I should say something important. Since then, I guess I've been afraid that everything I say is nonsense. That no one wants to hear me."
The class was still silent. At this point, if a pin should fall to the ground the sound would be very audible.
"I don't talk much because I'm scared of wasting people's time. And standing here right now, I feel like I'm wasting all of yours."
This was the first time I could sense the class listening with patience. I went on.
"My mom tells me all the time that I have good ideas. She says I'm creative, that I see things differently. But everytime I try to speak, I hear my dad's voice telling me it doesn't matter. That I don't matter. That's why I'm shy. Not because I don't want to talk, but because I'm scared to find out he was right."
I looked down at my paper which I was supposed to talk on about "My greatest influence", and I realized how useless they were. None of that was the truth. This was the the truth.
I expected laughter. Maybe even pity. But for the first time, no one said a word.
Then I heard a voice from the back. "Bro...that was brave."
Someone else murmured, "Yeah."
I looked up. Some of the girls in the front row had tears in their eyes. Even Donald, the loudest kid in class— the one who usually derived joy in making my life miserable—was just staring at me with all seriousness.
Mrs. Lilian cleared her throat. "Thank you, Jonathan. That was really honest. Probably the most honest thing I've heard in the class. And important too."
For the first time in years, I didn't hear my dad's voice in my head. I heard hers, and maybe that mattered more.
When I walked back to my desk, I felt this calmness within me and a relief. Like I had just let a serious weight off my chest. I had said it out loud, and I survived.
For the rest of the day, classmates I'd barely spoken to began to give me taps on the shoulder and small words of encouragement. It felt strange, but not in a bad way.
That night, lying in bed, I replayed the moment again and again. My dad's words still haunted me, but now they weren't the only words in my head. For the first time, I realized my voice didn't have to be expressed in fear.
IMAGE CREDIT: META AI
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