learning how to be findable

In eighth grade, my English teacher once quoted Descartes to a shy classmate who folded into silence when she was called on. I think, therefore I am, I recall her say. When you express yourself, that’s how you know you are here. That's how people find you. It’s proof you exist. I remember fidgeting with my books, terrified of being singled out next. Back then, I was already dissolving in the absence of my own self-articulation. My silence followed me until I was 23, and I almost made peace with the idea of staying like this forever. I hid my art, my writing, swallowed my words whole before they reached my throat. Perhaps I'm simply not capable of existing loudly, of being findable. It's like when other people are born luminous by nature. You don't question their radiating ease, do you? What started to bother me wasn't loneliness - I wasn't that lonely. It was watching rooms fill and glow with people who wanted collaborators, wanted company, wanted someone like me, and realizing I had…