At some point in my life, I conned myself out of being able to speak. There’s a lot of life story that went into that, I won’t maim you with the details, but if I’m being real with myself it all links back to my signature trait, my overwhelming need to control.  Now, okay, let me context you up real fast. When I say unable to speak, I don’t mean I’m completely non verbal. What I deal with is this gnarly anxiety disorder called selective mutism. Essentially, I know what I want to say, but when I try to talk, the words get trapped in my throat. It’s situational, but I have no say over when it happens and no power to fix it when it does.

To lose an ability as basic as speech, one would expect the circumstances to be pretty dire. And um, sometimes they were. I’ve had it happen during presentations and job interviews, on stage and in doctors’ offices. But for me, the real high stress situation was day to day conversation.  See, at an early age I had it ingrained in me that in order to be accepted, I needed to be perfect. Anything less and I wasn’t worthy of love. Conversation was a test, and the stakes were impossibly high. If I gave the wrong answer, the other person would yell at me, badmouth me, hit me, mock me, and most devastatingly, abandon me.

Tragically, I was not perfect, so I was forced to manufacture it. Every aspect of me became carefully curated to be as agreeable and likable as possible. How I spoke, the way I carried myself, what I weighed, it all was highly optimized to compel people to see me exactly as I designed. No detail was spared, even the seemingly insignificant.

The panic of some trace of the real me slipping through quickly overpowered my mind. I was physically incapable of being myself. The consequences of saying anything that contradicted the image I had built were so severe that my body would reject it, forcing me into one of my silent spells. I became a concept rather than a person.  Over time the voice inside my head grew uncertain about my ability to maintain my facade. It provided a constant stream of you’re going to mess up, you’re going to mess up, you’re going to mess up. I was so plagued by the idea of failing that I effectively willed it into certainty. That pressure to perform was too insurmountable, and I’d end up losing the ability to say anything at all. Nothing felt acceptable anymore. I needed full control over how I was perceived, and anything I could say wouldn’t convey the exact idea I wanted.

All that is to say, hi, I’m Taylor. I like puzzles and ladybugs and coming of age movies. I am a mobile gamer, a car singer, and a chronic eavesdropper. I have every word of Sisqó’s thong song memorized, and despite growing up in the south, I have absolutely no interest in football. I cry at any and everything, so much so that I carry eye drops. I spent years controlled by depression, anxiety, and eating disorders, and though I may not fully be rid of them, they no longer play the central role in my life. I am not remotely perfect, but I refuse to be inauthentic.