When you are the kind of loud, purely extroverted person who
wants always to be in the middle of a passionate conversation, you are bound to
put your foot in your mouth. You're going to overshare, to make it seem like
it’s all about you in an attempt to relate, to make a joke that falls so flat
you can hear people’s stomachs turning. It’s just a hazard of the territory,
but it doesn't make it any less unpleasant to look back on the next day. There
was the moment when you said something stupid and then, in an attempt to get
back the territory you've lost, you proceeded to dig yourself into an
ever-more-extreme conversational hole until the other person was visibly
looking for a way to get out. Re-living scenes like that the next day are one
of the worst parts about being an extrovert.
But when you’re on, you’re on. You can charm a room, make
everyone laugh; put almost anyone at ease in most any situation. You’re not
afraid of confrontation, you shine in interviews, and you have a knack at
getting along with new people. When you are in control of the careening steam
engine that is your loudness, there is nothing better.
I was always told that I was a loud girl. I should stop
talking so much; stop putting myself where I wasn't wanted, stop offering my
two cents. As you age, being the talkative type tends to prove beneficial in
competitive business environments, but most of being a little girl is about
being docile, passive, a supplicant. It’s about being seen and not heard. It’s
about retaining that perfectly soft, approachable sweetness that only comes
with choosing your words with absolute and graceful accuracy. It’s about being
the cute little thing that other people want to play with, not the one who
dictates people and tells everyone the dirty joke she learned from her older
cousins over the weekend.
“Loud girls are annoying,” people would tell me, “It’s like
you're a boy.” I didn't understand — I wore pink, I was short, I had long, straight
hair. What about me wasn't in the most perfectly narrow definition of girldom?
Was having a voice, even one that tended to escape me when I would get just a
little too excited, really so mutually exclusive with femininity? Was being the
leader, the talker, the connecter, really the domain of boys? Particularly at
the age where boys seemed more terrified if anything by a female presence, it
felt ridiculous to write my girliness off simply because I liked to have my
voice heard.
For so long, I believed that, in order to find love and
respect, I would have to quiet down. When I would interact with new people,
especially in those breathless beginnings when everyone is
trying to put their best foot forward, I would sweat bullets attempting to clip
my speech and only speak when necessary. I would never raise my voice, never
tell a bawdy joke, rarely even curse. I wanted to be seen as ladylike, as poised,
as the kind of woman that you could be proud of without her ever edging near
the territory of your masculinity. It was important to me that I be in control
of how “myself” I was, even if it meant I barely enjoyed the group chats.
I was just trying to impress my friends.
And I realized that the boys who I had tricked into wanting me with a false,
edited version of my personality eventually grew weary of me when I became my
full, loud self. They would wonder where the charming, airbrushed version of my
personality from the first few weeks had gone, and why I was suddenly the one
telling the embarrassing story to the whole table at the bar. And I would look
over, and see his discomfort, and be overwhelmed with shame. I was that loud
girl in school again, the one that no boy would ever like. I shut up.
I chose to stick to my lifestyle and for what’s
worth it; people will eventually accept you the way you are. Today, what went
around had come around and I'm glad I didn't have to let go of myself for the social
satisfaction of my peers.
