I Am Frightened By How Much Work Has Taught Me To Edit My Real Self Before I Even Open My Mouth

Dear Delyara, I hear it in my own voice now. The extra politeness. The over-explaining. The carefulness around boundaries. The pre-softening of ideas. The internal calculation before asking something completely reasonable. The way I try to make my needs arrive in such a non-threatening shape that nobody can accuse me of being difficult for having them at all. This is what some workplaces do to women. Not only use them. Train them. Train them to sound easy. Train them to sound grateful. Train them to perform professionalism in ways that slowly remove oxygen from the parts of them that once spoke more directly and stood more upright in rooms. That frightens me. Because I can feel myself becoming someone smaller in tone than I actually am in truth. And I do not want the job to win in that way. Not over my voice.