09/22/xxx3

e·lec·tive mut·ism/:In contrast to selective mutism, someone who is electively mute may not speak in any situation. Elective mutism is often attributed to defiance or the effect of trauma.

If you were too look up in the dictionary, encyclopedia, or medical anthology anywhere, chances are you wouldn’t find this. I guess it’s not a real thing to doctors or therapists. I’m not selectively quiet, I do not suffer solely from social anxiety, no thats not the case with me. Not entirely. While it’s true that I get nervous around people, it’s not from regular nervousness that everyone experiences growing up; If it were that simple, maybe I’d be a happier person, but it’s from a ‘secret’ I cannot voice. Every time I try to say it to myself, my throat constricts around the vibrations, and the words refuse to form.

That’s precisely the reason why they are still out there living a life unruffled by the aftermath of their actions. Because every time I tried to help, to speak out about what is still clear in my head, nothing comes out. It’s been that way for ten years of my life and I don’t know what I ever sounded like. In my head, the thoughts that run through my head don’t hold my vocal identity, there is a disconnect, and I’m stuck playing the voice of a mother long gone over the subtitles in my mind. I think that’s why nothing ever comes out, the trigger is in my head and each cognitive thought pulls it to silence me again with a metaphorical bullet and I can hear clearly the sounds of the igniting gunpowder, the flash of light and the ringing deafness. It never fails to give me chills, more so than the ones caused by social strife.

High school is ruthless. You aren’t allowed to be different if your support group isn’t big enough to influence the social network in the building that you’re entitled to it. That’s the biggest problem though. Social. Is exactly what I’m not. It’s not something I can be. I literally have to suffer in silence to the physical and verbal abuse because my peers find it funny and challenging to try and get me to utter a sound of discomfort when they yank on my hair, trip me, slam me into the lockers by random acts of stupidity. I am the perfect victim of a silent crime. It was only last year that my hair grew back long enough to be put in a ponytail, the girls chopped it off with a crude pair of scissors because I wouldn’t speak. Couldn’t.

Regardless of their actions it’s always this unmoving curiosity. ‘When will she reach her breaking point and say something?’ ‘No one can stay quiet forever.’ But i’ve been doing it since I was six. I’m waiting for the day a guy gets bold enough to see if I scream out if they can get to me and literally me of my dignity. I know they want to. They’d get away with it, but theres always the risk. Men either get off on it, or they avoid it. So far? I’ve been lucky and spared that humiliation that would no doubt set off a chain reaction, I mean really. Did I not just mention how you weren’t allowed to be different? Every jock would have to get his turn with the girl who utters no sound.

I think it’s because in every class, the teacher has to announce that I can’t do presentations, speeches or any verbal activities because medical professionals have said that I’m not capable. Due to trauma. Ironic how they only wanted to treat me delicately and make the others understand me, but they’re the noose around my neck and the reason for my excommunication...exile. It doesn’t help that I’m sensitive. I can’t develop a thick enough skin to just be stoic to their teasing. The minute my eyes get watery, it’s a victory they like to rub my nose in by making them spill. Humans can be the worst type of animal. And I was no doubt sure that the new girl being introduced in class would be no different. I was right of course. Why are people so pressured into fitting in with the popular crowd? I'm really dreading tomorrow. I've been hearing things. Hopefully they'll forget I exist? I doubt it...

-Hyo

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I suppose I should start from the beginning then right? It doesn't make sense for me to be crying and acting this way if I don't tell you the whole story...

I’d heard of her. Who hadn’t? Hard to miss, when every other phrase from a person’s mouth involved something they did to the quiet chick, something they saw someone do, ideas about what they would do. I mean of course people talked about other things in our high school but , as many times as I’ve heard just that one phrase, ‘the quiet girl’, you’d think I’d be able to write a damn book called ‘The Misfortunes of Quiet Chick.’ Honestly. But really, no one knew much about her. I chanced a question just once about her and was laughed at.

“She doesn’t talk man, why do you care? She might as well be a ing poster on the wall.”

Posters didn’t get thrown at them, or cut. If you’re wondering why the hell I never did anything about it, well. Here’s my logic. She didn’t talk. For whatever reason, she wouldn’t speak a single word. She was picked on in school. How would something like that go in her mind? If I sat down one day and backed her up when got started? In my head, she’d either think I was trying to get in her pants, or trying to look good for self fulfillment. One thing I can say in my defense? I hadn’t personally seen anything happen.

There were some weeks where she’d be left alone, and others where Hyosung couldn’t get a moment to herself until she got home. This was one of the bad weeks. And by ‘bad’, It meant the Latin teacher wouldn’t let her go into the lunchroom 'bad'. Sounds typical, a teacher helping out a student who is being picked on, but the sad part was that he wasn’t her teacher, ever. He was another stranger in a building full of them, and he only knew of Hyosung's plight because his students would discuss ways to torment her. He would hear it in the halls, in the bathroom, in the parking lot. And he was the only one who gave managed to give her peace.

I think the other teachers were scared, or they didn’t really believe that she had a serious issue. Him? I wasn’t all too sure, but he’d stop her in the hall on my way to the lunch room, with a tray of food already there and he would talk to her.

Don’t ask me why he did, He knew she wouldn’t talk back, but she’d gotten comfortable enough to write sometimes. He would teach her a few things about Latin, even if it was his break and he should have been taking it easy.  

The word she learned this particular lunch period was repercussus. It meant echo. Repercussus Vox. The echoing of the voice. Hyosung didn’t know if some of the words he picked for her to learn were vocal related on purpose, but she did admit inside that she found them funny. He had even given her a classification. She was Hyosung, the elusive and rare Sileo Vox. She didn’t get what it meant but he said simply “A priori” To the quiet girl. The Silent Voice, was her Latin nickname, and ‘From the earlier’ just meant that the phrase was common knowledge in latin, or just something obvious. Hyosung didn’t get it until he said

“It’s like saying All people have bones.” Stating the obvious. Mr. Lim was peculiar, but he made her forty-five minutes of hell into something educational and tolerable. The gilded needle in the blazing haystack.

So there was one day I heard the plan, heard who would do it and why it wouldn’t work this time. Apparently, Changmin, star quarterback, wanted the glory of being the only one who knew about her meetings with some weird teacher. Well. One of the only ones, and planned some pretty sick in the boy’s bathroom. This actually checked first yet missed me. How the . Anyway, needless to say, regardless of if I knew her or not, whether she wanted my help or not, this wasn’t happening. Just no. I guess how he found out was that he needed to go get his book (or you know, steroids) from his locker in C-hall and saw her heading back to Mr. Lim’s classroom while he went on and on in a fake language. But Mr. Lim wasn’t going to be in school the next day. Something about a seminar or some . He’d announced it to each class.

So what did I do? I didn’t know her schedule, her name, anything about her. My walks into the attendance office and asks them to call her to my location. They knew who I was referring to of course when I said the quiet girl, the one that never talks, but by law, rule, whatever, they couldn’t actually do as asked because I wasn’t related or a well known friend of hers. So I lied my off and said I was her boyfriend. That got me some disbelieving scoffs, but I backed it up by saying, “I have to pretend otherwise or else she’ll have it worse than she already does.”

“Jongin... I don’t know what you’re planning to do to this girl, but-”

“It’s not...” I sighed and shook my head. “The truth is, I wanted to ask her personally if I could eat lunch with her because I’m sick and tired of knowing her as three words rather than her name. I’m not plotting I promise,” I pouted. I was sure I would be getting a pink slip right then and there, but I was surprised by their logic.

That. got them to call.

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Hyosung's Diary entries are posted at the top of the actual story for backstory on her and her issues.  The story is all from Jongins point of view, but her entries will be from hers. Hopefull this all makes sense.