Read Online The Voice of the Xenolith by Cynthia Pelman - Free Book Online
Authors: Cynthia Pelman
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know. If I fail an exam, if I write rubbish papers, then I can see that they have something to complain about.”
“So,” said Mrs. E., “You are sitting quietly, and this quietness, this silence of yours, is causing people to complain about you, to make your parents worry about your future.”
I felt bad because I wasn’t telling Mrs. E. the whole story, so then I told her that for some teachers, like the geography teacher, I don’t do the homework.
She didn’t seem to care about that. She wanted to talk some more about participation. She asked me, “So when you are not putting your hand up, and you are not giving the answers the teachers are waiting for, what are you actually doing at those times?”
“I am just sitting, doing nothing, maybe listening, maybe not, but I am not disturbing anyone.”
“So are you sitting, not disturbing, just being silent?”
She was really getting to me, asking the same thing over and over. This was getting boring.
“Yes, that’s what I said, I already told you, that’s what I’m doing, just being silent.”
And then Mrs. E. said, “Is being silent something you know a lot about?”
Well, that stopped me in my tracks. Because as I have told you, when I was five I didn’t speak outside our house; I was silent for more than a year. So silence is something I am expert at, I suppose.
I know I am a quiet person. I don’t do small talk, I don’t chat. But what about the right to remain silent? How many times do you hear that in police dramas on television? How come criminals have the right to be silent and teenagers don’t?
So I said nothing.
One of the things that people don’t know about selective mutism is about the fear. I suppose most people know that if you have selective mutism you actually can talk, but you choose to talk only with certain people and in certain places. But what I think most people don’t know about us is the fear that makes your heart beat very hard and very fast and everything goes black and you just want to disappear.
It’s not only about talking, it is about being looked at, having people listen to you talking and watching you while you talk.
The feeling I used to get, and I can still remember it, when I was expected to speak in front of people who were not my family, or in places where other people might overhear me, was like a big force, a monster, coming down and landing on my neck and grabbing me so I couldn’t get away, and squashing my chest down, and I would feel like I couldn’t breathe, and I had to close my eyes. I felt as if I could avoid it by not looking at it, and if I didn’t look at it, it wouldn’t be able to see me either.
My heart used to beat so fast that I thought I would die, because I had heard about heart attacks: my father’s father died from a heart attack when I was four, and I thought this feeling was a heart attack and the monster was called the Heart Attacker.
It is really embarrassing to talk about it now, but when I was small, sometimes the Heart Attacker would hide under my bed at night and I was scared to go to the toilet in case he grabbed my feet when I got out of bed.
And that is why I didn’t speak at school, because the Heart Attacker would grab hold of me and I couldn’t breathe. My parents thought I had asthma but in the end it wasn’t asthma or a heart attack, it was selective mutism, but we didn’t know it then.
I used to dream that I could fly. I don’t mean wishful thinking or daydreaming, I mean real dreams, the dreams you have when you are asleep. I would fly high above all the schools and all the teachers, and people would look up and say, “Look! There goes Amethyst!” And nobody would be able to tell me what to do, nobody could try to make me speak, because I would just fly away.
Selective mutism is a kind of phobia. You can’t explain it to someone who doesn’t feel it. My dad has no fear of spiders but my grandmother, his own mother, just can’t stand them. If she
“So,” said Mrs. E., “You are sitting quietly, and this quietness, this silence of yours, is causing people to complain about you, to make your parents worry about your future.”
I felt bad because I wasn’t telling Mrs. E. the whole story, so then I told her that for some teachers, like the geography teacher, I don’t do the homework.
She didn’t seem to care about that. She wanted to talk some more about participation. She asked me, “So when you are not putting your hand up, and you are not giving the answers the teachers are waiting for, what are you actually doing at those times?”
“I am just sitting, doing nothing, maybe listening, maybe not, but I am not disturbing anyone.”
“So are you sitting, not disturbing, just being silent?”
She was really getting to me, asking the same thing over and over. This was getting boring.
“Yes, that’s what I said, I already told you, that’s what I’m doing, just being silent.”
And then Mrs. E. said, “Is being silent something you know a lot about?”
Well, that stopped me in my tracks. Because as I have told you, when I was five I didn’t speak outside our house; I was silent for more than a year. So silence is something I am expert at, I suppose.
I know I am a quiet person. I don’t do small talk, I don’t chat. But what about the right to remain silent? How many times do you hear that in police dramas on television? How come criminals have the right to be silent and teenagers don’t?
So I said nothing.
One of the things that people don’t know about selective mutism is about the fear. I suppose most people know that if you have selective mutism you actually can talk, but you choose to talk only with certain people and in certain places. But what I think most people don’t know about us is the fear that makes your heart beat very hard and very fast and everything goes black and you just want to disappear.
It’s not only about talking, it is about being looked at, having people listen to you talking and watching you while you talk.
The feeling I used to get, and I can still remember it, when I was expected to speak in front of people who were not my family, or in places where other people might overhear me, was like a big force, a monster, coming down and landing on my neck and grabbing me so I couldn’t get away, and squashing my chest down, and I would feel like I couldn’t breathe, and I had to close my eyes. I felt as if I could avoid it by not looking at it, and if I didn’t look at it, it wouldn’t be able to see me either.
My heart used to beat so fast that I thought I would die, because I had heard about heart attacks: my father’s father died from a heart attack when I was four, and I thought this feeling was a heart attack and the monster was called the Heart Attacker.
It is really embarrassing to talk about it now, but when I was small, sometimes the Heart Attacker would hide under my bed at night and I was scared to go to the toilet in case he grabbed my feet when I got out of bed.
And that is why I didn’t speak at school, because the Heart Attacker would grab hold of me and I couldn’t breathe. My parents thought I had asthma but in the end it wasn’t asthma or a heart attack, it was selective mutism, but we didn’t know it then.
I used to dream that I could fly. I don’t mean wishful thinking or daydreaming, I mean real dreams, the dreams you have when you are asleep. I would fly high above all the schools and all the teachers, and people would look up and say, “Look! There goes Amethyst!” And nobody would be able to tell me what to do, nobody could try to make me speak, because I would just fly away.
Selective mutism is a kind of phobia. You can’t explain it to someone who doesn’t feel it. My dad has no fear of spiders but my grandmother, his own mother, just can’t stand them. If she
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