Wattmag Issue #10

Life Lessons: Quiet

In my Wattmag bio, I wrote that one of my goals as in life was helping people with my writing. Writing fanfiction and stories is one way, but I wanted to try something new. So, embracing my new love for writing articles, I decided to do a little series for Wattmag. I'm calling it Life Lessons. I'll be writing about things I've learned about life so far from books, shows etc. The goal? To help someone out there with what I learned.

So, my first article in this series is about the book "Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking" and what it taught me. But before I get into how this book helped me, I have to talk about what I was, and still am, going through. This part is very difficult to write. Why? Because I'm talking about things I've never talked about before, not to family or friends.Some wouldn't see growing up as the quiet girl to be a struggle, and honestly, it wasn't at first. As a child, I was dubbed the "quiet" and "shy" girl. I was praised and ridiculed for it, which can have a child confused. My quiet nature caused me to not get into a lot of trouble, I was the definition of goodie goodie two shoes. Grown ups loved seeing a well-behaved child, and I liked not being seen as a bad kid. But there were also the adults who would say "Sheena, you need to break out of your shell, talk more". Being the goodie goodie that I was, I nodded, but in the back of my head, I had no intention of breaking out of my shell, I liked the way I was. 

Things started getting more frustrating when I was eleven. Back in the day, in my country, primary school students had to take an exam to determine what secondary school they went to. Each student got to pick five schools they wanted to go to and based on their grades, they got a school on their list. The better your grade, the better the chances of you going to your first pick. I was one of those kids who did well enough to get their first pick, it was one of the top academic schools on my island. I was so excited and pleased with myself, and the people around me were too. But then, in getting those pep talks from people, I realized some only seemed to care about me being outside my parish, which would make me "break out of my shell". Knowing that hurt much more now than it did then. Like, they didn't care that I was going to one of the top schools, they just cared that this might be my chance to actually get...normal. Sadly for them, that didn't happen. I was lucky to find some amazing friends, TeaceFindlay, a writer for this magazine, is one of them. These girls never told me to not be myself, and I love them for it. Because of them, secondary school was the best years of my life, contrary to most people. During those years, the question "Why are you so quiet?" started coming. My answer would always be "I'm just like that" or "I don't know". I wasn't like most teenagers, but I didn't care, I still liked the way I was. 

Things got more difficult as I got into the young adult years. Again I wasn't fitting the mold, and I was fine with that, was used to it even. But becoming an adult comes with expectations, and apparently, I wasn't meeting any of them. There was one thing that happened that brought me down to a new low. It could have been the thing that started this whole depression that I still get into sometimes. When I was nineteen or twenty, I told two family members that I wanted to study medicine and be a doctor. One of them literally laughed and said how could I expect to be a doctor when I "don't talk to people". That hit me really hard, I didn't expect that family member to say that about me. The other member saw how hurt I was and told me that I could. But it was too late, the damage was already done. I cried for a really long time. I think that was when it finally hit me. People thought that I was incapable of speech, had low expectations of me. They thought I was weak, naive, stuck up.