Hey.

It's me. The guy living in your walls rent-free.

I was busy writing something else. Then I remembered that if there anything I need to talk about, it would be this.

Remember Komi Can't Communicate? It wasn’t bad. I liked it, but it was a dreadful experience for me.

I don’t think the author was trying to make Komi relatable. Her charisma is anything but natural. My attention instead went to Tadano, a person with unrealistic compassion and patient.

No one in the real world would be that perceptive and kind at the same time. No one would see other people’s problem and decide to take on their mantle.

If I kept my silence in front of teachers, they would only get annoyed at me. Scolding for not speaking up. Talking about how I am not treating them seriously.

There would be people who would try to help out, but no one would always be there for me.

In fact, everyone would just fail to see the issue. It is not social anxiety.

People don't know about it because I don't speak about it. I don't speak about it because I can't speak. And when I do muster the courage to talk about it, people just call it social anxiety.

Selective Mutism is much worse than what people may call “just social anxiety”. They may have the same root, but they are not the same thing.

The more you talk, the easier it becomes. A questionable statement, but it is, in general, true. Exposure does helps with social anxiety.

So what happens if you can’t even talk in the first place? How are you supposed to get that exposure?

That, I think is the difference. Same problem, but one is infinitely less fixable than the other.

To have Selective Mutism can be a bit of a death sentence. You can’t call for help. You are mute. People don’t think that you have a problem, because you do, from time to time, managed to squeeze out a few words here and there.

“You are just shy,” “you will grow out of it.”

Either someone finds out that you have selective mutism, or you find it out yourself by chance, or you are just going to be stranded. Alone, forever wondering why your life is such a mess.

I am honestly surprised some genius figured out Selective Mutism is a thing. Even more so that there is now a subreddit for selective mutism.

But even if you found out, could you even seek help for it? I cannot. I still haven’t been diagnosed. I couldn’t ask. And I don’t think I would ever have the strength to ask for help.

Sometimes I think I am not Selectively Mute. I most definitely had it when I was younger. Staying quiet, only talking to the one friend I had, who probably now completely forgot about me.

Now that I have tried to be more social, and it worked. It wasn’t easy, but I have more friends I can talk to.

Yet every time I get thrown into a new environment, that fear returns. I cannot speak.

I have realized that it simply never left me. Then I realized something else.

I cannot even speak to my own family. The very people living under the same roof. The people who have raised me.

I have gotten good enough to pretend that I am normal to my friends, but quite frankly, I am not even sure if I can speak the next time I meet them.

I wonder what they would think if they find out that I cannot even speak to my family. Would they bombard me with questions?

My family did find out that I do speak with other people. That only made me feel guilty that I couldn’t talk to them out of all the people. I think it made them desperate, they think they could make me talk if they just force me to.

They keep praising me for every word I speak. That makes it so much worse.

If people know that I am vulnerable, out of my depth, would they come and comfort me? I can hear their supporting words, almost heroic. And then, they would leave, back to what they were doing.

They don’t get it. No one understands how terrifying it is to be left alone without a voice.

I have nothing but my pride. Some strange pride that forces me to pretend that I am normal. Take that away and I will collapse.