Jessica Liu

Mr. Humeniuk

English III Honors

11 May 2022

Breaking Radio Silence

“Hi, Aiden, ready to turn on your camera today?” I asked.

A black box stares blankly at me as I feel the steady awkwardness settle into my stomach. The silent response is almost deafening as the other kids sit impatiently waiting, their faces start to drift away from their screens.

It’s so bad it makes me want to quit altogether.

I never thought I’d have to face this kind of dilemma. As a high school student, I thought the only experience I would have with online zoom lessons would be as a student, not the teacher.

Time ticks grudgingly slow. My fingers fidget with a pencil and my leg bounces up and down to the beat of an erratically racing heart. Just one more minute, I tell myself.

It’s a close gamble against throwing it all in or waiting until the very last second. I decided to wait a little longer.

Several more seconds tick by.

Several more…

…

A newfound sympathy for teachers seems the only thing that’s willing to speak to me instead.

Waiting for Aiden to communicate probably seems hopeless. It’s been a month of zoom classes, but he still hasn’t said a word or even messaged me. I know he’s not a bad kid from what his mom has told me, he just feels too shy according to her. From experience with past zoom classes, I know most teachers would probably give up or leave him be. It’s the easier option, and I don’t blame them whatsoever. It’s hard sitting in blank quietness while you watch everyone fidget in the uncomfortable silence.

I know I’m probably being annoying, and that it would be easier to just leave him alone, but a feeling inside me tells me that today something is going to change. After all, I know whenever teachers or parents call someone shy it’s most likely related to anxiety, which is a feeling I’m all too familiar with.

At its worst point, my anxiety would fill my days with dread and fear, clinging onto me tightly and only unfolding itself when I came home from school. It weighed down on me, suffocating every aspect of my life until I couldn’t find any space to breathe.

In the beginning, it crept in at a slow pace, showing me little things that I never noticed before such as how small my friend group was compared to other people or how my clothes never fit current trends. It was small things like that, but it was enough to make me second guess myself.

Then it would walk faster, following me when I walked to school, nagging me constantly about how the strangers in the cars that passed me would judge me, or that no one I ever talked to even liked me. It’s almost amazing how well it managed to take hold of so many parts of my daily life.

It only grew worse when I didn’t make the dance team in junior high. My anxiety started to sprint after me during this time, feeding into my humiliation and poking at my insecurities as I watched my friends dance away without me while I desperately tried to fight back my own inner turmoil. It held me back from forming friendships and talking to people while telling me I was far too unlikeable to be friends with anyone. It was awful, and I had to find a way to deal with it.

To cope with it all, I decided to stretch more often.

Of course, it’s not the first thing that comes to mind whenever someone’s trying to confront their own anxieties and insecurities, but I found myself getting stronger mentally the more I did it.

I had a set routine of stretching. It went shoulders, wrists, hamstrings, hips, feet, back, and then the splits. Every motion of stretching is an intentional one, every position should push the body further toward its goal. It’s not a very kind activity, most of the time stretching involves holding the body in uncomfortable positions for long periods of time until the body gets used to it. It’s interesting how it teaches you to accept pain and to push yourself forward. There’s no time to worry about pain or discomfort because the only way to get better is to become comfortable with the uncomfortable.

I knew that I would have to do the same when I taught zoom lessons. Aiden wasn’t going to be the only unresponsive kid I would teach, but I knew that I couldn’t just ignore him either. It was going to take more than just sitting in awkward silence each week to get him to communicate freely with me, but several weeks of radio silence were finally broken when he sent the message.

It came in the form of a small red notification in the chat. He said,” No…sorry,”.

I had finally gotten a signal. Never had two words carried so much happiness before to me.

I knew Aiden probably hated me every time I asked him to talk, in the past I would be too, but it didn’t matter to me whether he loathed me or not. In the past, whenever I wanted to talk but felt held back by my anxiety, I knew the chance offered by a teacher was something that I could always rely on so I wanted to give him that same opportunity. I knew that by not offering that same chance to Aiden, he probably would’ve never gotten to say what he wanted to say.

I knew that the message, as small as it was, probably took a lot of guts for him to do. It’s not a conversation really worth mentioning, but it's a moment I’m proud of for both of us. Aiden, for stepping out of his comfort zone and for me, for not giving up even in the most awkward of silences. Teaching people how to confront what’s uncomfortable to them, is something that I think is worth teaching for a lifetime.