Words by: Sasha Jones 
Art by:  Jaime Tyzack

The quiet friend. The loud friend. The mean friend. The smart friend. The funny friend. Society loves to sort individuals into categories.

A behaviour that I am admittedly not exempt from. It helps us make sense of the people and world around us. But humans are not one-dimensional. We shouldn’t be defined by a single characteristic. 

I have spent most of my life with the quiet friend label stuck to my forehead. 

When I first became aware of this, it didn’t really bother me. If anything, I was perfectly happy to be typecast this way. It felt like a good thing. I was a silent achiever, a friendly background character, sweet and understanding, present but not overbearing. I wasn’t flawless, but I did my best to always be agreeable. 

However, eventually, the label started to feel like a bad thing. There were times when I resented being viewed in this one-dimensional manner. 

I started to worry that people wouldn’t like me if I didn’t act a certain way. I struggled with feeling constantly overlooked, seen as shy and insignificant. I felt pressured to censor myself, never offering more than my most sanitised thoughts and feelings, to remain palatable to others. 

It used to feel like being quiet-natured made it easier for others to walk all over me, particularly in a high school environment. I let people get away with taking credit for my work and leaving the worst tasks to me, all because I was convinced that was the right way to act. 

An experience my fellow quiet girlies can probably relate to was when a disruptive student would get moved next to me in an effort to fix their behaviour. I always found this unbelievably unfair – what had I done wrong to deserve someone else hindering my learning? Being the cooperative, pleasant, timid one was no longer a role I played by choice, but an expectation placed on my shoulders.

I’m more comfortable in my own skin than I was just a few years ago. I understand now that being the quiet friend doesn’t stop me from being other things too. I’ve grown into my quietness, wielding it at the appropriate times, comfortable in the knowledge that I don’t have to speak louder to be heard. I just have to speak up for myself.

I’ve learned to balance how others view me with my own perceptions of myself. I understand that having this label isn’t a good or a bad thing, it just is. 

We are not objects to categorise and put into boxes. I’m not a book or TV show character that can be reduced to a trope. But an existing label is not a burden. You are the only person that can choose what it means for you.