Day 5

This is all kind of surreal. Never before have I had to stay home all day doing the same things I would be doing in school, in my living room. On top of that, if someone comes into the room and says "what do you want for dinner," or something of the sort, I have to stop what I'm doing and pull out a white board just to write my answer. It makes communication slow and in some cases uncomfortable. If someone I don't know very well talks to me, I have to scribble something down and hold it up while they read. However, the level of difficulty fluctuates. Sometimes during the day I'll be sitting and quietly working, and I'll think of how easy not speaking seems at that point. I think that if I just keep most things to myself, and communicate only vital things through my whiteboard I'll be fine and the month will pass by quickly. However once I go to the grocery store, or to a movie, I'm immediately on guard. I can't wander around places alone, because if someone asks me to hand them something, or if I need help finding anything, I have to grab someone who knows my situation so they can be my voice. But with all that aside, the situation is still very interesting. I have more time to just listen to people, and I'm learning a lot about just how much people use their voices. Also, after just 4 days (today is my 5th!), my voice is feeling better. For the past 2 years, my voice has almost always been causing me constant pain. The amount would change depending on what I was doing at the time, but it was guaranteed that I wouldn't ever not feel at least a tingle in my throat (I'm planning on writing a whole paper on what caused the pain-my nodules, and now my lesion-at a later point, so if you're curious that'll be posted here!). But after a week of almost complete vocal rest, the pain has almost gone away. We're hoping that the "month of silence" will make the lesion go away along with the pain, and after that I'll be free to do theatre and sing to my hearts content.

This past week hasn't been very exciting. On Wednesday my younger brother, Merrick, got to stay home from school, and the two of us went with my mom to her office at the college where she teaches. I mostly did schoolwork (I have a lot of it), and Merrick wandered around chatting with the secretary and other teachers. Later that day when we went to the thrift store (we can just acknowledge the fact that I go there a lot. It's the best store in the world), as Merrick and I were looking at Halloween costumes a saleslady came up to us. "Do you need help with anything? What are you looking for?" she asked. I had just used my one sentence (I get one every 15 minutes) a couple minutes ago, and she was staring at me expectantly. Merrick, also, being the 9 year old that he is, seemed to have forgotten that I couldn't speak and stood there staring at me. I wasn't going to answer her question, so I stared right back at Merrick. Our little staring triangle went on for a moment, until Merrick exclaimed "OH!!! No, we're fine." And the saleslady left, looking confused. Circumstances like this tend to come up a lot. If my mom introduces me to one of her co-workers, I just stand there smiling and waving at them until my mom jumps in and says "Oh by the way, Scarlett can't speak. She's on vocal rest." It's odd not being able to verbally communicate questions and responses. Almost as if I'm in a one-person silent movie, with bad miming and slow captions. However, I'm almost a quarter of the way done already, and I'm sure I'll find creative ways to spend my time and communicate with people. In the meantime, I have plenty of time to go thrift-store shopping, learn sign language, and watch Mean Girls as many times as humanly possible.