Shy

by Naomi K. Lewis

  I can do it in a city park if I have to. Running through the shadows of poplar trees or next to the rushing river, I step lightly so passers-by won’t notice me. Dark sunglasses and a long-billed running cap add to my disguise. A light snow is welcome because it blurs my features. A stiff wind is useful too, the kind that flings hair over other people’s eyes and makes them tuck their chins.

  For as long as I can remember, I’ve practised being unseen and unheard. All through my childhood, I escaped my large family by going on solitary walks at our weekend farm. I liked to bury myself in tall grass by the beaver pond, raising the collar of my flannel shirt over my head to keep away bugs. The sun warmed my clothes, and the mossy earth was gentle beneath me. Listening to the trills of red-winged black birds or the faraway ticking of a woodpecker, I found refuge. In winter, I lay on the snow-covered ground. Wearing snow pants for warmth, I disappeared into the vastness of a deserted field. Puffs of white skidded over the icy surface around me, while I stared into the wide blue sky. The cold air held a special kind of silence.

  It takes more effort amongst people, but it can be done. On the last day of high school when everyone else celebrated with their friends, I sat alone in the schoolyard under a tree and wrote a poem. It’s in my yearbook. I put it there a few weeks after high school was over, along with the signatures of friends that fill the blank pages at the front and back. The poem ends like this: “Remembering and sometimes forgetting, and knowing that I go as I came, surrounded by people but nevertheless alone.”

  I could claim it’s because I need time to think, that I don’t like to speak before I know what I’m talking about. I could say I prefer listening. There’s so much to learn by remaining silent. Subtext is revealed to those able to pay attention. Most people are too concerned with their own ideas to notice the slight raising of an eyebrow, the curling of a lip, or the sneer beneath the surface of the skin. I see it all, and as a result can foretell with startling accuracy the ending of a love relationship or an impending clash of wills between colleagues.

  A nicer justification for my reserved attitude might be that it attracts the best sort of friends. Patient and soft-spoken, only the gentlest souls, deeply sensitive and kind to the bone, are willing to wait for me to emerge. It can take weeks or months or years, depending on the degree of pressure. The less I am forced, the more likely I am to step forward.

  My hesitant nature makes it easy for me to adjust to others who also need time to forge human connections. Because I recognize and respect the limits of shy people, I make friends extroverts never will. I used to work next to a woman who rarely spoke, yet every morning she greeted me with an unrestrained smile, and I returned the gesture.

  We didn’t need large volumes of words to establish friendship. The exchange of smiles led to spurts of verbal communication, which turned into coffee-break walks, then grew into outings for lunch and the occasional supper together in a vegetarian restaurant. Sharing with one another our personal histories and mutual fear of social situations, we formed a bubble of calm in an otherwise chaotic cubicle farm. In one another’s company, we found unconditional acceptance, a rare gift for shy people. So many would rather fix us than understand us.

  She made my work life distinctly better, but it makes me sad sometimes when I think about it now. Most people will never know that she designs and sews all her own clothes, that she has a passion for world travel, or that she gently nurtures and protects the fifty orchids growing in her home. Each flower needs a slightly different temperature, degree of sunlight, and amount of water.

  I could say all those things, and they would be true, but they would cover up the basic reality. A lot of the time, it’s raw fear, the worst kind imaginable. The kind that grips the back of my throat and makes my pulse roar. The kind that drains every coherent thought from my head and makes my body quake. When it happens, I dread looking the way I feel, so utterly foolish and stupid.

  As research for a work project, I once took an Instructional Skills Workshop. The idea was to learn enough about effective teaching to script a video for continuing education instructors. A key element of the workshop was what they called mini-lessons. Each of us had to create a series of ten-minute lessons and deliver them in a small group. Compared to teaching a full-length class of thirty students, this was a minor exercise for most of the participants.

  For me, it was terrifying. The first time I tried to deliver a ten-minute lesson, I lost all the moisture in my mouth. I couldn’t focus on a single object. The room became a nauseating swirl of colours. I could hardly form words; yet, strangely, no one seemed to notice the depth of my anxiety. Each time I gave a lesson, it was less distressing. By the final one, I could glimpse the faces of my group members, provided I didn’t linger. But I never reached the point where I could stand in front of them and speak spontaneously. The best I could do was recite a carefully worded speech. The instructor said it sounded like I was reading from a text, and she was right. Although I had no papers in hand, I conjured the printed words in my head to guide me.

  Months later, in an evening course, I wrote a script for a dramatic short and had to pitch the story in front of the class. We were a small and friendly group. Our teacher had been a professional comedian, so the atmosphere tended to be lighthearted and silly. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to experiment with thinking on my feet. Although I organized my thoughts beforehand, for once I didn’t arrange them into a speech.

  I did better than ever before. More than a minute passed without incident. I stood at the front of the room with a normal amount of moisture in my mouth and a body that was not trembling. It seemed like everything was going to be okay. Then I looked at the intense focus on my classmates’ faces, and all of a sudden I had a full-out systems crash in my brain. I couldn’t remember what I wanted to say, or even what had just come out of my mouth.

  My eyes remained glued to their expectant faces. While they waited for me to continue, nervous tension buzzed through my guts. It formed a prickly ball that tumbled inside me, gradually growing until it burst wide open, filling my chest with a tingling sense of panic. I would’ve liked to turn away. I would’ve liked to run. But I stood there, a quivering mute. And then the instructor rescued me. “If you can’t think of anything else, just give them a smile and say, that’s my story.”

  I returned to my seat, and life moved on. The next person gave his pitch, then the person after that. The instructor made useful comments, and I concentrated on listening. Soon my breathing returned to normal. Halfway through class we took our usual break, everyone gathering in the hall the same way we’d done since the first night we’d met. People talked to me, looking straight at my face. They didn’t turn their heads and cover their mouths to suppress barely audible snickers. They laughed as much as they always did, but never once did anyone laugh at me.

  To this day, I can be choked silent by social anxiety. It has happened a few times since that moment in front of the class, although in less noticeable ways. But having my worst fear realized did loosen its grip a little, and for that I am grateful. All my life I’d lived in dread of just that kind of moment. Then it actually happened, and I was astonished to discover how insignificant it was. Although I was embarrassed, the awkwardness only lasted minutes. Once I’d survived, I had to admit the whole thing had been founded on an inflated sense of my own importance.

  The most damaging part of shyness isn’t the embarrassment. It’s the missed opportunities that accumulate, all the moments when I could have made meaningful connections but failed because I was afraid. Over the years, I’ve stood in countless lines waiting for favourite authors to sign my copy of their books. Usually, I’m wearing a jacket in an overly heated theatre. A slick of sweat has formed on the back of my neck. My face is flushed, and I can hardly breathe at the thought of meeting a person I greatly admire.

  While I watch other people chatting comfortably with the author, I run through possible comments in my head, eventually throwing out eve
ry last one because none seems adequate for describing the book I hold in my hand. Afterwards, I hate myself for not coming forward, for not encouraging the author’s hard work, for not showing the world what matters to me. It’s not good enough to formulate coherent sentences half an hour later. I need to speak in the moment. What if that author might have shared something important about writing? What if I missed the perfect tip, the secret trick of the trade, the one piece of skill or understanding that could take my own work to a deeper level?

  David Adams Richards is amongst the authors I admire most. In particular, I’m fascinated by Mercy Among the Children. The novel conveys the complexity of a community, all of its struggle: the misdirected attempts at kindness, the thinly veiled animosity, and the noble virtue of a quiet man steadfastly refusing to beg the truth. The author raises deep moral questions. He tells a personal story of universal importance. Yet when I had a chance to talk to him, I wasted it.

  Timidly, I handed him my copy of his book, mumbling my name and making him ask me to repeat it. With downcast eyes and a soft voice, he seemed almost as shy as I was. I watched him open the cover of my well-worn copy, hoping he’d notice the softened edges of the paper, the pages that had been turned repeatedly.

  He’d finished signing, had placed the book in my hand, and was looking toward the next person in line before I finally said something. “I enjoyed your book so much, when I reached the end, I flipped it back to the beginning and started over.” Although my voice was louder than usual, it was still not easily heard. Thinking he was too busy with the next person to notice me, I continued moving away, but at the sound of his voice, my head turned.

  “Thank you, Debbie,” he said.

  Shyness is a cage. It traps me inside its silence. I can’t get out, and other people can’t get in. If the walls were thick and solid, it might be tolerable, even comforting, to be in the company of my own thoughts. The cage might be as familiar as the flannel shirt over my head when I was a child at rest on mossy ground by the beaver pond. But I’m an adult, now. There are no walls on my cage, only bars. Through the openings, I see everything I’m missing, and I torture myself trying to understand why others do not always seem able to see me.

  Throughout my life, I have been passed over. When neighbourhood kids gathered in the field, no one picked me for their baseball team. At school dances, I waited against the cement wall as guys approached the girls next to me. I have been overlooked in my career multiple times: not considered for interesting projects, not included in team recognition, skipped over in favour of people with more outgoing personalities.

  I can be with a close friend, yet hesitate to speak so long, an entire hour passes in utter monologue, my only contribution the occasional uh-huh or nod. In a year of regularly attending a yoga studio, I can fail to make a single acquaintance. At a party, I can sit on a couch between two women chatting happily around me as if I weren’t there, never including me in their conversation. They can continue talking several hours, while I fade into non-existence, too scared to get up and go somewhere else where people might notice I am alive and breathing. Afterwards, in the darkened car on the drive home with hot tears wetting my cheeks, I vow never to allow myself to be so invisible again.

  As part of my self-prescribed aversion therapy, I go to a bar on Saturday afternoons with my husband, to listen to jazz and practise the art of making conversation. I love the music and could happily sit there for the three hours just listening. The people surrounding me might even let me get away with that. We are all there primarily for the music, but I also encourage myself to talk to people.

  We’ve been attending for more than five years, and for the first two I felt such anxiety an hour before leaving the house, I’d start to tense. My shoulders would rise. My jaw would clamp down. I’d hear the heartbeat blasting in my ears, sense the quiver coming into my breath, and tell myself to stop getting worked up over nothing. When admonitions didn’t help, I’d move on to inquisition. What was I worried about? Why was I anxious? I never found answers. The fear was dark and deep, and refused to explain itself. By the time we’d arrive, every muscle in my body would be clenched. I was unsure of my ability to safely cross the room. As the saxophone riffed, I caught myself gripping the sides of my chair, and not because of the music. Later, back at home, I’d hurt all over from the tension.

  Yet we kept going, and I set myself a simple goal. Each time, I challenged myself to speak to one person. I began with a quiet man who didn’t know anyone, and happened to be sitting next to me. Both of us shy, our voices were so soft we had to lean in and pay close attention to hear one another. I asked if he was enjoying the music. Then I asked what he did for a living. Soon we discovered he worked with my cousin at the local hospital. All it took was three or four awkward questions, and we were engaged in conversation. I forgot to worry about what I said, he was so interesting. He was a photographer, and we discussed the importance of seeing light and shadows.

  Over the weeks and months and years, I repeated this exercise and made a number of meaningful friendships. Although I no longer feel anxiety going to this event, since I know many of the people there, I still behave in a disappointingly anti-social fashion some of the time. People whose friendship I cherish will sit a few steps away, and I will struggle to work up the courage to leave my seat and go talk to them.

  The strange thing is, in certain contexts, I’m not shy at all. Catch me running a race, volunteering with children, or travelling in a foreign country where I don’t speak the language well, and you’d swear I’m an extrovert. Immersed in something that ignites my sense of creativity and adventure, I lose all sense of hesitancy. For a moment at least, I openly approach the world. Afterwards, I challenge myself to imagine a life constructed only of environments in which I feel inspired and at ease. Every time I find myself in a situation that frees me, I add it to the list. Being part of a female book club, taking swimming lessons with people I don’t know, sharing a campfire with backcountry travellers, collaborating with a creative team I trust—there have been many moments that drew me outward.

  I also take note of situations that make me withdraw. Overly male organizations, people in uniform, and authority figures can tighten my throat and render me silent. So do ceremonies with elaborate protocol and parties thrown by the ostentatiously wealthy. If I suspect I do not belong, I shrink into an unreachable part of my soul, casting a stern expression to warn people away. Not everyone picks up the signals. A gregarious colleague happened to catch me in full retreat one day. Instead of keeping her distance, she drew near and asked what was wrong. The best explanation I could offer was that I suffer from social anxiety.

  But even in environments where I’d normally hesitate to speak, I will immediately step forward if I think unfairness has occurred. I will jump three organizational layers, walk into the office of the person with the most power, and speak my mind openly while others remain silent. Under those conditions, I have no need to prepare a carefully worded speech. I know what to say. Not that my efforts have ever made any difference. Although surprised by my sudden willingness to speak, and respectful of my point of view, the people in power tend not to take me seriously. Maybe they realize that once I leave their office, I will return to my quiet and co-operative self, never causing reason for concern again.

  The act of writing holds that same urgency. When it’s going well, I don’t hesitate to expose my true thoughts; I simply write. Perhaps it’s because I keep so much inside. When the floodgates open, the sudden rush of unedited thought clears everything in its path. It carries away self-doubt, replacing my normal state of low-level anxiety with an intoxicating mix of bravery and freedom. In such moments, I’d rather be writing than doing anything else. Even when the results are not especially good.

  Given a choice, I’d write my life rather than speak it. I’d carry a miniature whiteboard and a supply of multi-coloured felt pens. If I didn’t like what I’d written, I smudge it out with the side of my hand and try
again. I’d use different colours for each mood and large print for important information.

  I once took a course on writing by Aboriginal women, taught by Aruna Srivastava. With a fresh look on what should be taught and how it should be learned, she guided us toward a different kind of knowledge. Instead of sitting auditorium-style, we arranged our desks in a circle. Instead of writing essays, we kept journals and created group websites. Best of all, instead of merely reading the works of Aboriginal women, we met some.

  For most of the class, I was my usual reticent self, listening as other students shared their ideas, only speaking when called upon to contribute to group work or asked a direct question. Then Marilyn Dumont read her poetry and drew me into her reverie. When a silenced voice breaks through, it resounds with a deeper tone, the fullness of the words increased by their prolonged denial. By the time they are released, the thoughts have become precisely pitched notes capable of infiltrating even the thickest mind. The whole world must stop and listen.

  After reading her work, she drew us into a discussion about writing. She told us that her journals provided the foundation for most of her poetry. Their pages gave space to her growing ideas. She’d brought one along to show us. We watched her unfold the bound notebook and run a fingertip over a blank page. Sometimes entire poems were born there. They came into being on the thick paper with light blue lines, coaxed into existence by the purposeful act of writing.

  When she asked if any of us kept a journal, I said that I did. Even though I’d been hiding the notebooks for years, taking comfort in the knowledge that my handwriting was too messy for anyone else to read, I came forward. I didn’t care who knew. Suddenly, it no longer had to be a secret. When she asked why I wrote, I told her it was to know my voice and how to use it. I said that, until I’d started journaling, I hadn’t realized I could have a say in my own life. I had no idea what I really thought or felt. When you’re unseen and unheard, you can remain hidden even from yourself. The poetry I’d written as a teenager was little more than the faraway rumblings of a stranger. I was thirty before I owned my words.