Voiceless

There has only been one time in my life that I lost my voice completely. I think it was early college sometime. I woke up one morning and the first time I tried to say anything to anyone, no sound came out. I had to speak in a strained whisper almost the entire day.

I thought it was kind of cool, actually, at least at first. It got old after a few hours, and made me grateful for the ability to speak. 

I was thinking about that this morning. I felt kind of crummy when I first woke up. I hadn't slept well the night before, and I took cold medication last night, which I almost never do. This knocked me out until about five in the morning, and then I spent two and a half unpleasant hours lying awake with a mild headache but no energy to pull myself out of bed. I couldn't tell what was making me feel worse, the cold or the cold medication, which is actually why I usually avoid drugging myself up, no matter how awful I feel. 

But when I did finally drag myself out of bed, I was a little excited to try my voice out. Yesterday it had been cracked and scratchy, and after a day of socializing followed by a night of caroling at my former roommate Julia's place, I nearly lost it entirely while talking to my family on the phone. Having a dog gives you a good excuse to test your voice without sounding like you are talking to yourself (which I still do from time to time, only now I get to pretend I'm actually talking to my dog, which is slightly more socially acceptable). As it turns out, my voice isn't entirely gone, but it's close. 

When I took my morning run, it kind of cleared my airways, and for the duration of the run I had a good portion of my voice back. And yes, I did speak aloud to myself on the treadmill to test my voice - it's like a mosquito bite or minor flesh wound that you just can't leave alone. I was slightly disappointed to regain my voice, especially since I had already changed my Facebook status to announce to any of my friends who care that my voice was pretty much gone. But once I finished my run (which was shorter and slower than normal and nearly floored me afterwards - I'm not as healthy today as I thought I was) I was happy to discover that my voice had fled once again.

One thing I realized this morning, while thinking about the one and only time I lost my entire voice, is that I use my voice a lot more than I used to. It's partly because I am now a teacher, and have been in some capacity for the last seven years. But it's more than that. I consider myself a very verbal person, but I have never really considered myself particularly vocal. The verbal side of me comes out in my writing more than anything, and I spent many years being very quiet in social situations. I have a tendency to be more comfortable being friends with people who are talkers (though I also wouldn't say that all my close friends are talkers), in part because if someone is open and talkative, it puts me more at ease to be the same. 

It's true that there are times that I just don't know what to say, but there are also times when I say very little because I don't know how people will react. Somehow, somewhere along the way, I decided that I shouldn't really let it matter, though. In fact this came up in a conversation with a friend this weekend, which may help explain my train of thoughts this morning. I'm pretty sure I'm always going to be a little on the quiet side. For whatever reason, it's just kind of how I am. But I'm a lot more vocal than I used to be, and sometimes it surprises me when a person who knows me very well tells me they don't think of me as a quiet person. I have been trying to counteract my tendency to think too much about things, and to accept that if people like me, then they like me, and if they don't, then so be it. I don't let myself show through in my interactions with people, then they will never know me well enough to decide if they like me or not. 

And the honest truth is that I tend to like most people once I get to know them, even if they are loud, or anal, or talk constantly about their work,* or talk to themselves, or admit to crushes on Tom Selleck, or maliciously invite me to the Institute building under the ruse of helping them figure out how to use their MacBook in order to spread their rhinovirus germs around the ward. I think realizing this more than anything (that is, realizing that I tend to like people when I know who they are) is what helps me to be more open to people. Which then leads to me using my voice more, since I've got to somehow bring this post back to where it started, which leads to more opportunities to show off my cracking, faded voice and have people feel sorry for me because they think I am more sick than I actually am :). 

I do think teaching class tonight is going to be interesting.

* Actually, you should click on this link if you have any interest in hearing perspectives from the auto industry right now.

Also, my apologies to Kelsey for my choice of image to display on this post. I realized when I chose the image that the conspicuous display of a wedding band would probably give her the wrong idea entirely about the content of the blog entry and unnecessarily got her hopes up. But I used the picture anyway.