Am I really a shy girl ?

Why are you all so mischievous and disrespectful? Why can't you be quiet and shy like your cousin?

Quiet and shy? Am I really quiet and shy?

I used to think I was a lonely person with low self-esteem, agoraphobia, and a kind of depression due to the extreme oppression and loneliness I suffered as a child.

Or perhaps it's because I used to sit alone at home for hours without talking to anyone, being the youngest in the family. Every time I wanted to share my opinion or just talk about my day, I was silenced with them saying, "When the adults speak, the children are silent." This made it incredibly difficult for me to even look others in the eye or have a simple conversation. Or maybe it's because they instilled in me from a young age the idea that friends are a threat and enemies pretending to be kind, so I started avoiding making friends or even talking to anyone for fear that their warnings would come true. Fortunately, I've managed to pull myself out, at least partially, from the swamp I was in. At least I've started making friends and talking to people freely, and I've gained at least a little confidence. Sometimes, I sit alone as usual and wonder, "When they all gather and start looking for me to join them, doesn't anyone ever wonder why this girl is like this? Why doesn't she join us? Why is she so quiet? Why doesn't she tell us what's going on with her? Why does she always prefer solitude? Why does she avoid our gatherings and sit alone? Has something happened to her?" I truly wish they would stop rushing me to their gatherings. They blame me for my loneliness and boredom, as they describe me, and I wish they book themselves an appointment with a psychiatrist. I now see them trying, even unknowingly, to create trauma for their children and grandchildren.

…And with that realization came a quiet, unsettling clarity.

I began to see patterns I had never dared to name before. The same phrases repeated themselves across generations, like an inherited script no one questioned: children must obey, silence is respect, solitude is safety. What they called protection was often fear wearing a familiar face. Fear of the world, fear of betrayal, fear of losing control. And without intending to, they passed that fear down like an heirloom—fragile, heavy, and impossible to return.

As a child, I absorbed it all without resistance. I learned to measure my words before they reached my lips, to rehearse conversations that would never happen, to find comfort in the predictable stillness of being alone. Silence became my second language. Solitude, my shield. While other children learned how to laugh loudly, argue freely, and reconcile easily, I learned how to disappear in plain sight.

Even now, when I sit alone and hear their voices calling me to join them, my body reacts before my mind does. My shoulders tense. My heart speeds up. A thousand questions rush in—What if I say something wrong? What if I don’t belong? What if they see too much? They mistake my hesitation for arrogance, my distance for indifference. They never consider that I am still learning something they were taught naturally: how to exist among people without shrinking.

What hurts the most is not their misunderstanding, but their insistence on “fixing” me. They label my quiet as a defect, my preference for solitude as an illness, my boundaries as rejection. They speak of psychiatrists and diagnoses as if loneliness were a crime and silence a symptom. They never ask why I am this way. They never sit beside me in silence long enough to understand it.

And yet, despite everything, something in me has begun to change.

I no longer believe that friends are disguised enemies. I have met kindness that asked for nothing in return, conversations that didn’t demand performance, people who listened without interrupting or correcting me. I am learning—slowly, imperfectly—that trust does not always end in pain. That not every voice is meant to silence mine.

Sometimes I still choose solitude, but now it is a choice, not a sentence. I sit alone because I want to think, to breathe, to reconnect with myself—not because I am afraid of others. And when I do join them, when I speak and laugh and let myself be seen, I feel a quiet pride. Not because it is easy, but because it is earned.

I look at the children around me now, at the way adults talk over them, dismiss their feelings, frighten them into obedience, and I feel a deep sadness. I see the future being shaped in those moments—the withdrawn teenager, the anxious adult, the lonely soul who believes silence is safer than truth. And I wish someone would stop and ask, What are we really teaching them?

Maybe one day, when they wonder why their children sit alone, why they struggle to speak, why they pull away from gatherings, they will remember their own words. Maybe then they will understand that wounds are not always loud, and trauma does not always announce itself.

As for me, I am still healing. Still learning to look people in the eye. Still unlearning the fear that was planted in me before I had the words to defend myself. But I am no longer lost in that swamp. I have found solid ground, even if my steps are cautious.

And for the first time, I believe that my voice—quiet as it may be—deserves to be heard.