There are many ways I’ve come to define myself over the years: a voracious reader, a lover of baking, a mathematics fiend, a Nintendoer (still trying to make that term popular), and many, many more.
But the one that I cling to most tightly, that lies fundamental beneath each whim and interest and idiosyncratic expression, is that I am an introvert.
A lone ranger.
An island of a man.
Not to say that I don’t have friends, or don’t love others, or don’t occasionally enjoy mild periods of extended interpersonal interaction (which I believe is called “hanging out” in the colloquial parlance), but I’ve always viewed such things as extra. Supplements that provided variety to a life equally as fulfilling without them.
“Introverts have to be alone to recharge,” the internet and I proclaimed, so pardon me if I don’t seek more than the occasional dose of engagement.
Perhaps that could make me seem a bit rude.
No, I just really need to be alone for a little bit.
“Turns out I won’t be able to make it tonight, I…” I have ended that sentence in more fabricated ways than I’d ever care to admit.
People say that too much of a good thing can make you sick. What happens when “a good thing” is self-inflicted isolation? What happens when the craving for a window of reprieve from the crowd turns to the urge to padlock the doors and shut out the crowd forever?
What happens when alone becomes lonely?
What happens when I just keep telling myself what I want to be alone?
What happens?
I become alone.
But I don’t want to be alone.
It’s only in the rarest moments when I achieve blissful awareness of that fact, when I’m finally able to drown out the cacophony of silence and unlock the doors and exchange the oppression of solitude for the solace of a precious friend.
Then thoughts and words and feelings and laughter and joy come flooding in again, borne by those closest friends who stood waiting all along. Waiting in places only we can find, with jokes only we can find funny.
I love those jokes.
I love those places.
I love those people.
Oh how I love those people.
I suppose that’s a funny thing for an introvert to say.