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I get cut off mid-sentence an awful lot. In meetings at work, I generally have this unspoken rule: by the third interruption, I just disengage with the conversation. I don’t mean those moments accidentally cutting across another; I’m talking of those rude, dismissive digressions, which take the conversation in a whole new direction.

I don’t know what it is. Am I too softly spoken to be taken seriously? Too quiet to be heard? Do I not command authority? My voice too monotonous for the impatient ones? Or is my speech too broken, my thoughts too slow? My manner unpersuasive? Who knows? I’ve never got to the bottom of this quandary.

All I can say is that it reminds me why I have avoided these spaces for so long. It’s so much easier to work alone, or engage with others one-to-one, than attempt to engage only to be silenced. A loner not so much by choice as by necessity. I’ve never really understood why there is no space for me.