It's a thought.

I spent a lot of my formative years learning how to listen carefully,
skillfully. Through locked doors and closed windows, i would tune my
ears to catch my sisters confiding in one another, plotting revenge,
devising schemes. I developed a knack for reading the lips of shadows
and deciphering the murmurs and whispers of my parents in far-off
corners of the house, planning my fate.

And despite all that alacrity for listening, I have the hardest time
listening to someone right in front of me. I'm unable to understand
them at all. They look me in the eye and speak. And it's like another
language or something. I completely miss the point, much to their
dismay.

But I bet if they moved away, to hush themselves in secret chambers
and whisper in quiet privacy, I would hear them. I would understand.

But no one talks to you like that. They only talk about you.