Softly Spoken
Thoughts from someone who never speaks loud enough
You may have noticed my nom de plume here: Softly Spoken. I’d like to tell you a little about where that comes from.
Growing up, I was always told how very ‘softly spoken’ I was. At parent-teacher interviews, speeches, family events, and almost any social event where I had to speak above an average conversational tone, this epithet hung from my throat like a steel dog tag.
Mostly I’ve turned this into a cute anecdote about being able to edit sentences in real-time: when people fail to hear what I’ve said the first time, I get a second chance at articulating what I was trying to say initially but, with some revision. It’s very handy. It’s also important to note: in this process, I never get any louder.
When I step into any venue on a night out, I immediately scan the room. On the left, we have an excitable group of squealers, to the right the open kitchen, dead centre is directly under the speakers but the back opens out onto the smoker’s courtyard. I stand deliberating a little too long. If I situate myself too close to any of these zones, we will reach the (inevitable) point where my companion for the night is just slightly annoyed at having to ask me to repeat myself.
And I understand the frustration, I do. It makes my listener feel as if they’re going deaf, or worse, inattentive. To me, it feels like a slight on myself at the core. I reel in their dissatisfaction at how I fumble this vital social convention. All of a sudden, I’m sitting at the table feeling as though my skin has left me and I am bare-bone. I sit there wearing nothing but my soundless words.
Recently, I stumbled across an author who shares in this feeling. Olivia Liang writes about the vulnerability of being alone in social situations where most people come in a group, like a bustling bar or cafe during rush hour. Already feeling on the outskirts of this particular society, she describes an interaction she had with a barista: while attempting to order, Liang’s accent was misunderstood and she was asked to repeat herself, faced with the cocked-head, open-mouth grimace people do when they want you to know they’re straining to hear you.
“No doubt it was ridiculous to be so sensitive. But there was something almost agonising about speaking and being misunderstood or unintelligible, something that got right to my fears about aloneness… Dumbness in this context might be a way of evading hurt, dodging the pain of failed communication by refusing to participate in it at all. That’s how I explained my growing silence, anyway; as an aversion akin to someone wishing to avoid a repeated electric shock.”
Occasionally when I am drunk or feel particularly passionately about something, I discover my loud voice. It falls out of me like a shrill, discordant note that pierces my mind and jolts me back into sobriety. The feeling sits in my throat unfamiliarly, as if another being has temporarily possessed my body and let out a dissonant cry. In fact, I can recall three distinct times in my life when I’ve spoken too loudly: once when I was in the back of a friend’s car sharing an enraged story about a high school rival, and once when I was incensed at some men as they refused to listen to a woman’s opinion. The final instance was more of a collective experience: when I would stand at the top of the living room stairs and release a deep, guttural “I HATE YOU” to my father during some teenage spat. These moments sat so uncomfortably in my body at the time, that they have now taken permanent residence at the back of my chest, burrowed only deep enough that I can still call upon them whenever a pang of self-loathing needs indulging.
Last year, I was introduced to a friend’s family that speaks very slowly and intentionally. They relish long pauses in conversation while they digest the last piece of information proffered. Their answers or roll-back questions are always thoughtfully placed on the table with a neat clarity completely unbeknownst to me. You see, I come from a family of fast talkers. Brought up on Gilmore Girls and the power of rapid talking, we use quippy out-and-about words that spark into the air until your brain has had a chance to catch what your point was. Our conversations are always verbal explosions that come laced with opinions and passion. Dinner conversations are less of a digestion of the day, but a tussle to speak (or more, be heard). Every boyfriend I’ve ever had has been faced with the question: “This must be a lot for you, isn’t it?”.
Existing in social circles where it’s hard to get a word in, you’d think the evolution would be to adapt my voice - to learn the appropriate volume needed to cut through the noise. Somehow, it has had the opposite effect. My process goes like this: I think of something to add to the conversation and begin talking at my regular volume. Only sometimes I am heard and sometimes spoken over (a fact that has not bothered me nearly as much as one would think). If someone has latched on to what I’m saying, they will patiently look to my lips for guidance or ask me to speak up. I do valiantly try to project a little harder, but it mostly only lasts for the first few words of the sentence. Any further requests to speak up and I shrink. A third attempt and eventually, much like Liang, I see it best to give up what I was saying altogether: “dodging the pain of failed communication by refusing to participate in it at all”.
This has, however, granted me a strange pass where once people realise I am talking, and if I succeed at projecting, the conversational pace changes and they stop to listen. Mostly these happen in hot-headed environments, the passionate discussions at the dinner table, or on someone’s balcony. In these moments, I feel such a giddy wave of confidence that I find myself sweaty-palmed and clutching at my moment. I continue stories and sentences that go on too long - my voice finds legs that run with this newfound freedom.
In writing this essay, I tried fervently to find research that could explain my quieter tendencies. The only semi-scientific explanation I could find was from a speech therapist on mumbling:
“If we assume a simplified understanding of speech production, we know it is composed of four major components: breath, voice (vocal fold vibration), resonance, and articulation. Breath is the power source of the system, voice is the origin of sound, resonance is the amplification or filter for that sound, and articulation allows speech sounds to be added or attributed to the sound. That means, that if mumbling is a result of inefficiency in the speech system, a breakdown at any point along the four components could result in mumbling.”
Perhaps. As much as I would like to have a diagnostic explanation for every niggling discomfort in my body, when do we call it as we fear: a fear of imposing on others? A fear of saying the wrong thing? A fear of being too much?
So I come to you now, thick in the flow of personal essay, having plenty to say. Asking someone to listen wholeheartedly to over 1500 words of confession here shows a breadth of confidence my tiny speech system couldn’t bear to handle. The personal essay is like a conversation, the meandering thoughts that people love in conversation are put down on paper. It’s my safe space to talk.
As I’ve grown up and the amount of people to talk to has dwindled, I’ve found myself here a lot more. I don’t have a whole family dinner table to come home to every day and I realise that placing all of those thoughts on one person can be exhausting. Whenever I’ve felt anxious to converse with someone, worried it will end as one of those unfulfilling conversations without any shared understanding, I’ve turned to writing more. Over time, this has grown into writing down almost anything I wish to say well.
Expressing these thoughts in a public space feels almost equally as terrifying. It is something that I debated against myself for months. On the one hand, I will never see anyone’s face as they try to unfurl my sentences. I will never see them strain to understand what I am trying to say. I don’t even have to open my mouth. And yet, these words have more weight to them than any I have ever chosen to say to those outside my small sphere.
A few years ago I met a woman, with many years of wisdom on me, who can write anyone into her bedroom with her - all her anxieties and feelings laid out on the dresser. She feels deeply and writes honestly, and is unflinching in her confidence to share this with those who love her. Implicitly, she is also sharing with those who no longer love her, and those who barely know her - all of it is taken under her stride. Whenever I sat down to overthink sharing these pieces with the world, her inspiration gently guided me forward.
I can only hope, one day, to express all of this in a more digestible, succinct verbal form. Conversation is one of our most vital pieces of connection in a world where it feels as though our communal walls are crumbling. Talking with others helps us to practice experimenting with uncertainty. Part of the beauty of conversation is its open-endedness, with no one knowing exactly where it may go.
In the meantime, I’ll continue to share these pieces from my mind out onto paper. With each shouting yelp, maybe I will string together the confidence to articulate this out loud.
To all my soft-spoken people, take comfort in this ultimate moment of acceptance:
Ego is the biggest enemy of humans. People who are soft spoken and truthful are loved by all. ~ Rig Veda
Until then x