Reading a room

I don’t think I ever learned how to speak. I just learned when not to.

It wasn’t deliberate. I just noticed early on that some things landed and others didn’t. A joke that made one person laugh would make someone else frown. A comment in one group would feel casual, and in another, loaded. So I adjusted. Not to impress anyone, but to avoid the weirdness. The little silences. The air shifting. That’s all it takes, really – just one moment of being misread to make you double-check every next one.

It’s not fear exactly. It’s more like forecasting. Reading the room, scanning the weather. Am I going to be too much here? Too serious? Too feminist? Too foreign? Too earnest? Too quiet? Too sure? It’s not even about insecurity. It’s just how I move now.

And it’s not like I’m lying. I’m just not saying everything. I don’t correct every bad take. I don’t always explain myself. I let things pass. Because I’ve learned that in some rooms, explaining just makes it worse. It turns something soft into something sharp. And then I’m the sharp thing. It’s exhausting.

I think that’s what people don’t understand when they say “just be yourself.” They assume the room is designed for that self. Most rooms aren’t. Most rooms are full of people who haven’t decided yet what you are. And they’re watching. Not to understand you, but to categorize you. Are you one of us? Are you safe? Are you too much? Are you allowed?

So I shape-shift a little. Not all the time. But enough to get through. Enough to stay in the room. I don’t want to get kicked out for being honest at the wrong time. I don’t want to lose people who never even saw me clearly.

Sometimes I wonder if that’s weakness. Or strategy. Or maybe just a side effect of growing up in between cultures, between languages, between ways of being taken seriously.

There’s something oddly empowering in it, too. Like I know something other people don’t. Like I’ve seen how things work when nobody’s pretending they’re fair. Like I’ve learned how to stay quiet not because I’m silenced, but because I’m saving my voice.

And still, sometimes, I wish I could just say what I mean.

But then again, maybe this is what I mean. Not the words I don’t say. But the fact that I’m the one who knows I’m not saying them.