My disability has progressed to the point that I can no longer talk *gasp*. Specialists say its not permanent so I am trying to keep hopes up and to keep trying to get my voice back. But I thought I would share what I have learnt so far after a whole week being nonverbal:
- You definitely can’t communicate as much in your body language without speech in conjunction. I may be getting better at charades but I still can’t tell someone urgently to stay in the room.
- Speech-based conversations are usually moving too fast to contribute to as a nonverbal person.
- You can’t set personal boundaries in conversations like you would if you were verbal.
- You communicate a fraction of a fraction of what you could when your verbal, you spend the attention span on others wisely with few questions.
- But still need to remember to crack a joke once in a while.
- Sharing how your feeling becomes a moot point when you need someones attention to get the dog to stop chewing something he shouldn’t.
- When you communicate with the world differently suddenly, your outlook and interpretation sure changes too.
- Going from being verbal to nonverbal is like being made to live in the loneliest hailstorm in a teacup. You can only daydream so much until you are stuck with forced self-contemplation. No matter the revelations about yourself and others, no one’s gonna hear you scream internally.
- Journaling becomes so much easier when literally everything you have said is already written down.
- Other people by default speak quieter around nonverbal people for no reason at all other than social assumptions.
- Text-to-speech apps are essential to make sure car rides are not in weird silence.
- There definitely isn’t enough options for these kind of accessibility apps than you’d expect.
- Every “friend” who doesn’t like text-based messaging will disappear from your life.
Ashley Kahurangi 