Shy. It's such a strange word.
If you were asked to define it, what would you say? When you see a small child hiding behind their parents' legs, you might assume the child is 'shy'. But what does that mean? If you looked up the definition online, you could probably give me a million responses to that question, but, be honest with yourself, no matter what a dictionary tells you, you'd still have your own idea of what the word means.
So, when you see that child hiding behind the legs of their mom or dad, clutching the fabric of their pants and looking nervously at the person speaking, you might assume, in that moment, that shyness is nothing more than a personality trait. Something that would fade away as the child grows up, holding no real emotion behind it. Something cute that you can laugh at when the child has a peculiar reaction to being asked a simple question.
And you do laugh. Never once questioning why the child seemed so afraid, because surely, that fear isn't real. That a child cannot be that scared, and that surely, the only thing the child would be afraid of is the monster under their bed.
You don't question why the child is hiding behind their parents legs. You don't question it, and you laugh along with everybody else, all thinking the same story you've made up in your heads based upon lies the rest of the world has taught you to believe.
But when that child grows up, and they're still "shy", you might assume, then, that the person is just introverted. You ignore the signs, you ignore the fear, passing it off as merely a personality trait, ever clinging to your beliefs that you have no reason to think are true.
"Shy". I've always hated that word. I hated it because it's not so much something you identify as, but instead, a label, given to you by others that have decided that that's what you are for you, never giving you the opportunity to speak up for yourself.
People have called me shy ever since I can remember. The earliest example of this I can think of, was in elementary school. A time when all other memories are faded and blurry. You might recall the faces of some of your friends at the time, their names forever lost to memory. Maybe the odd embarrassing thing you did that you still remember for a reason you cannot name other than to drift across your mind every now and again, painfully reminding you of its existence.
But in that bunch, there always seem to be one or two memories that, beyond all explanation, are crystal clear. You have no memory of the events leading up to it, and you can't seem to remember what happened after, but for a brief moment in time, it seems as though you were only fully conscious for that moment, allowing you to remember every detail.
I was thinking about one of those memories as I walked down the hall of my new school.