Mahangu Weerasinghe writes about “breaking the silence” on HeroPress, with one of the most moving stories I’ve read in a long time.
Somehow, as I progressed through high school, the expectant pauses of those listening to me were more difficult to bear than the nicknames and name calling. Often, I would not speak up, even when I had something I wanted to say.
My default setting was silence.
The web changed that. I still remember the first time I typed a URL into a web browser and watched the HTML render letter by letter, paragraph by paragraph. It was an experience that shook me to my core, this new understanding that my writing could now carry out over a telephone line, and in doing so, reach not just an intended recipient, but many. The world.
