How I lost my own voice

I'm told I had a Vienna Boys' Choir voice as a child.  My dad had a show-stopping tenor, so I grew up with knowledge of what a big voice meant.

Then puberty hit and I couldn't carry a tune. I added breath to my bass to cover up the loss of musicality, and it's only recently that I relearned that the key to holding a tune is to initiate loud sounds, even if those sounds are managed to create tenderness or quiet.

At the same time, I learned that my parents were busy and therefore were unable to translate anything I said in terms other than "that's great. You're great.  We're busy."

A long period as a white male feminist gave me lots of opportunities to despise anything that smacked of power or privilege, a mode of consciousness that I've fully internalized, even if I've become irrelevant to my fellow travelers on the road to equality and fair justice.

So, I'm left with a list of habits--the detritus of a lifetime of self-silencing. Here's what they are:

• I say "I'm sorry" as a shorthand to avoid more intimate or personal responses, driven by a belief that sympathy is the most valuable human interaction. (I know sympathy is just one arrow in our rich emotional quiver, and often not the arrow that's needed depending on circumstances--but lifelong habits like this one are so built into my foundation that I'm struggling to change.) Every instance of "I'm sorry" replaces a more complex and perhaps difficult conversation that could have occurred.
• When given an opportunity to control the mic in a group setting, I invariably say something like "I'll condense this into the 45 second version so you don't all get bored"
• I find trying to compete for attention in rapid fire conversations to be tiring, so I often drop out and let my focus drift elsewhere. I believe that I much prefer one-on-one conversations, and that I'm not effective or resilient in groups.
• I never express knowledge I possess, out of mortal fear that I'll be perceived as man-splaining. I often think I know something that might be a small help to another human, and I never express these thoughts.
• I hurry to "get the job done" during sex with my partner, as if sex is somehow wasting everyone's time (I don't believe that sex is a waste of time--quite the contrary--but I act that way.). I often remember that sex is about pleasure only about 3/4ths of the way through the process so I never express myself.
• I somehow want conversation to prove my independence of thought, so I try to not repeat truisms ever.  I also lose interest or get impatient when someone is repeating something I take to be self-evident because it's appeared in print and conversation so so many times. This shuts me out of many conversational topics, like politics or self-awareness, which feel like one hackneyed platitude (honors to George Orwell here) jammed together with the next.
• I block text/phone numbers for short periods when I sense that I'm triggered. Mostly, I do this with my mentally ill brother, out of self-protection.  I've also done it with my wife during arguments, old girlfriends when we were splitting up, and I'm currently doing it with a group of high school friends who are prone to lecture and preen about what they know.
• I'm getting fed up with multiple channels--I've started ghosting WhatsApp for instance, and I've got no interest in Instagram or Facebook even though I know many people I care about are presenting themselves there.
• Socializing feels easier and more fun with the lubricant of alcohol and recreational drugs. Both lead me to value silence more highly, and paradoxically feel things more intensely (I don't think I can address the relative value nor truth of my buzzed silence or intensity here. I don't perceive myself to be impaired, but I'm very conscious of the old saw from bar walls: "A drunk is someone who thinks no one understands, when everyone does. A stoner is someone who thinks everyone understands, when no one does."  Most recently seen at Mole', a wonderful Mexican restaurant nestled between the Meatpacking District and the West Village in NYC). Both silence and intensity reduce my voice. And, alone, they make me enjoy going to bed earlier to fall asleep in bliss. Another voice reduction, sadly.
• I can play decent piano but rarely practice regularly. I never memorize songs so I could sing along with myself.
• I allow others to shut down communication channels, often leading to having none left.
• I'm disabled by "burned bridges." Once a topic has turned ugly, I am unable to return to it with that individual--usually my wife since we have a lifetime of data on this topic (homage to Ginger Coffey's concluding paragraph).

I think my goal would be to have 42% of the airtime in any two-person conversation.  I don't want to dominate, but I want a generous back and forth.  Douglass Adams knew me?  He thought 42 was important.  I've silenced myself so much that by my own math I'm currently at 31% (my old Boy Scout troop number), and I get very defensive when I feel threatened that I might drop into the high 20's.