learning how to be findable
In eighth grade, my English teacher once quoted Descartes to a shy classmate who folded into silence when she was called on. I think, therefore I am, I recall her say. When you express yourself, that’s how you know you are here. That's how people find you. It’s proof you exist. I remember fidgeting with my books, terrified of being singled out next. Back then, I was already dissolving in the absence of my own self-articulation.
My silence followed me until I was 23, and I almost made peace with the idea of staying like this forever. I hid my art, my writing, swallowed my words whole before they reached my throat. Perhaps I'm simply not capable of existing loudly, of being findable. It's like when other people are born luminous by nature. You don't question their radiating ease, do you?
What started to bother me wasn't loneliness - I wasn't that lonely. It was watching rooms fill and glow with people who wanted collaborators, wanted company, wanted someone like me, and realizing I had made myself impossible to locate. I wanted to be pulled into things, too. I wanted to exist in other people's plans and projects, not just on my own head where no one could reach me.
If I don't show up and dare exist, how will I ever be found? I've been raising my voice more lately, but it's still not enough. I want it to erupt, higher and higher and higher, past every year I spent underwater, until the silence finally drowns out instead of me. I want people to find me and say come do this with us, too. This time, I would like to answer.