Silence is all I could give for multiple years of my life. People brushed it off as me being shy or antisocial. Although I do struggle in social situations it was never about that. Selective Mutism, a disorder that holds your words, forcing you to be silent whenever it feels like it. Growing up it sucked, no one understood or tried to understand. It was easy to avoid when I was young, preschool to elementary it was just seen as shyness and everything rubbed it off to just that, never getting angry at me. Once I got to middle school I started getting in trouble for not being able to speak, for shutting down. High school was no different. Teachers actively would ignore my disorder although being told by my parents and having the actual medical diagnosis they did not care, I had to talk. Friends would laugh and think I was faking it, I was just being silent because I was mad or that I was silent because I wanted attention. None of them realized I physically could not speak anymore. For years it scared me, stressed me out. I was always questioning “what if they hate me?”, “why can I not just talk?”, “why, why could I not be normal?”. I did not want to disappoint others so I worked forever on trying to talk even if I am in an episode. Guess what? I figured it out. I was able to push myself to speak in an episode but it hurts, it hurts my throat to do so, it hurts everything, always making it hard to breath but I did it just so I would not get in trouble with teachers as well as making sure my friends thought I was normal. For years that caused many mental breakdowns, anxiety attacks, and even horrible clinical depression. Now I realize that I should not have hurt myself for others pleasure. I want to pursue a higher education in Psychology so that maybe one day I can stop those like me, help them realize their worth and that they do not need to change for anyone. Children are very impressionable and when they have multiple people telling them their disabilities are not real or they are faking it can cause early onset problems that can bleed into their daily lives. One day I hope that more people can understand the grasp Selective Mutism has over those affected.