I get asked all the time, “Why are you so quiet?”<\/p>\n
At parties, I walk around and listen,<\/p>\n
unsure of when to join a conversation or, worse,<\/p>\n
when to let go and walk away.<\/p>\n
I have taught myself strategies, ways to get along.<\/p>\n
Those I share the problem with<\/p>\n
react in different ways. Some don’t believe me,<\/p>\n
others say, “It can’t be that bad.”<\/p>\n
But they don’t know about the nights I hid,<\/p>\n
choosing to stay inside,<\/p>\n
rather than go out and deal with how different<\/p>\n
I communicate and try<\/p>\n
to relate to strangers that can’t see the loneliness<\/p>\n
of not “getting it” or getting it all wrong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I get asked all the time, “Why are you so quiet?” At parties, I walk around and listen, unsure of when to join a conversation or, worse, when to let go and walk away. I have taught myself strategies, ways to get along. Those I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":291,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,441],"tags":[1082,1083,1081],"class_list":["post-13843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem","category-poetry-prompt-responses","tag-autism","tag-communication","tag-doubt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/291"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13843"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13843\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13902,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13843\/revisions\/13902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}