I talk a lot.
As peers that share lingo with me would say, I’m a yapper.
My friends are always telling me to “shhh” and “I’m trying to do my work.” I still talk their ear off whether they’re listening or not—whether they care or not. But I wasn’t always this way; in fact, teachers used to tell my parents at conferences that I “need to come out of my shell more.” My parents would just laugh it off and say, “She’s a lot louder at home.” Nowadays, I think my teachers want me way back in that shell again.
I talk a lot, but only when I am wired. Some might see me as an extrovert—I test as an extrovert in the majority of personality tests. I’m always turned around in class, chattering to the poor soul who was assigned to sit next to me and therefore became a victim of my never-ending verbal stream.
But when I’m alone, physically or mentally, I’m quiet. The actors lose their voices, and the audio falls silent. Or maybe, they’re still speaking, but nobody would know that. If a TV show is playing but nobody is there to hear it, does it really make a sound? Are they truly speaking aloud?
Either the show is muted, or the movie was intended to be silent, or there truly is nobody around to listen in on the musings of the actors. Their improvised lines go unheard, and their scripted sentiments are silenced.
My brain buzzes with words that want to be spoken—words that can never be spoken. Words that will live out their days lost in the labyrinth of my mind, never to escape from my lips. Each time they surface, I swallow them back down.
Nobody needs to hear that.
My mouth is constantly moving, no doubt, but the words carry no weight. They mean nothing; my silence would be more valuable than the lies and hollow phrases. Nonetheless, I continue to spout superficial statements like nails on a chalkboard to anyone with a grain of intelligence.
Through a lens of sophistication, it’s clear that nothing I say holds any validity—a void mess is the only sound crackling through the static on the television screen. The low hum of defunct technology vibrates through the stale air. The actors have given up, taking the channel off the air. Even their noiseless actions have been met with apathy, so they have retired to their off-screen lives. And, at the end of the day, A Televised Edition fizzes off air itself.
