Back in the day I talked way too much. So much that my parents told me to hold my horses when I wouldn’t be quiet. And like any obedient child, that meant I held my feet. My chatter mouth was nonstop. So much so that my teachers had to ask me to raise my hand and wait for my turn to talk.

The horror!

Somewhere along the way, smashed between a self-esteem crushing time in high school and freshman year at a college full of 40,000 strangers, I stopped talking. I self-censored. Where I once unabashedly called out the answer or questioned my teacher, my heart raced at the thought of talking in front of my classmates, even if I had something interesting to add. When I did finally muster the courage to speak (after raising my hand of course), my head would spin for hours afterwards. Overanalyzing every little sentence became my new hobby, and I spent more time thinking about conversations than actually having them. Continue reading »