The Day I Learned the Word Aloof

I went to a private Catholic school in high school.

Uniforms. Rules. Structure.
A place where you learned early how to be respectful, polite, and very good at not making adults uncomfortable.

So when one of my teachers called me a loner, it stayed with me.

It happened in class during a PE break.
Not announced to everyone—but not completely private either.

She talked to me about how I seemed like a loner.
Then she called one of my friends over and asked if she thought I was “aloof” too.

I remember standing there in my PE uniform, trying to keep my face neutral while my insides panicked. I wasn’t in trouble—but I felt exposed. Like someone had just narrated my personality without my permission.

And I will never forget the word aloof because of her.

Not because it was dramatic.
But because it was specific.
Because it felt permanent—like a label someone placed on me and walked away from.

She didn’t know me.
But in that moment, it felt like she had decided something about me.

What she saw was a student who didn’t talk much.
What she didn’t see was someone who felt everything.

I wasn’t unfriendly.
I wasn’t unhappy.
I wasn’t standing alone because I had no friends.

I was just… internal.

I listened more than I spoke.
I observed people.
I chose my friends carefully.
I needed time before I opened up—like rewinding a cassette with a pencil before it was ready again. If you know, you know. That was the ’90s.

But in a place where being noticeable often meant being loud, quiet somehow became “loner.”
“Aloof.”
As if silence automatically meant something was wrong.

That moment stayed with me longer than it should have—not because it traumatized me, but because it planted a quiet, lingering question I carried for years: Am I doing something wrong by being this way?

Now, as an adult—and especially as a parent—I see it differently.

Sometimes adults don’t really see kids.
They see behaviors and fill in the blanks with assumptions.

And kids absorb labels like they’re permanent.

“Too quiet.”
“Too sensitive.”
“Too emotional.”
“Too much.”
Or somehow… not enough.

Watching my own children now, I think about how many kids are standing quietly in classrooms, being themselves, while someone older decides who they are based on what they don’t say.

And how careful we need to be with our words.

Because quiet kids aren’t broken.
Thoughtful kids aren’t distant.
Observant kids aren’t aloof.

Sometimes they’re just listening.
Sometimes they’re taking their time.
Sometimes they’re becoming.

I wasn’t a loner.
I wasn’t aloof.
I was paying attention.

And I didn’t need to be louder to matter.

If you were that kid too—the quiet one, the observant one, the misunderstood one—I see you now. You were never wrong for who you were.

You weren’t broken.
You were becoming.
And that takes time. 

💛 A quiet hooray to being misunderstood and still becoming.