Have you ever gone to a party excited to see all of your friends and then within ten minutes of being there you’re wishing you were at home? Thus is the life of an introverted extrovert. I can spend days, weeks, sometimes months only being with my fiancé. Eventually I get an itch to be around the other humans that I know. Shortly thereafter I am reminded why we spend more time with dogs than people.
This isn’t a knock on my friends, they’re great and I love them immensely. I can spend hours talking to them (preferably via text) before my brain hurts, that’s why we’re friends. The problem is that I will inevitably be around people I just do not care about.
Perhaps saying I don’t care about them is a bit strong. What I should say is that there’s a seemingly endless supply of human beings that I have absolutely no interest in speaking to for any foreseeable reason, not even if it saved me from imminent death. Give me the sweet, sweet release of death please.
I’m not completely opposed to meeting new people, I’d just prefer that it be on my own terms. Which means I want to be able to escape when need be. Not IF I need to, WHEN I need to. My mind feels like a caged animal when forced to talk to someone about nothing. It frantically searches for a way out, begins clawing at the inside of my skull, and eventually passes out from exhaustion.
It literally wears me out being around people for extended periods of time. Yes I can do it, yes I have done it, and yes I will surely have to again. Usually what you’re getting in that situation is brief intervals of myself subsequently followed by very long periods of auto-pilot. The thing is – I really enjoy those periods of being myself.
I have no problem being the life of the party. However, put me in a conversation alone with someone talking about their sister’s cousin’s boyfriend’s life and the scratching in my head begins. I will avoid those conversations like the plague.
When I see an acquaintance before they see me I dodge them every single time. You can’t pay me enough to go have that pointless conversation, unless they have a dog with them. Dogs are excellent conversationalists. Amanda and I spend a lot of time talking to dogs.
Most people would say that the defining characteristic of an introvert is shyness. I wouldn’t know shyness if it screamed in my face, got nervous, then ran away and hid from me. I have never been shy, I’m even quite good at public speaking. What it really comes down to is – I have a preference for being inside my own head and I hate pointless conversation.
I refuse to small talk, chit-chat, gab, gossip, chatter, and prattle on about nothing. If I can speak my mind and our conversation has depth I won’t shut up. I will talk for hours and hours if I’m learning from someone (or if you’re a dog). But at the end of the day, I want to comfortably reside back in my own head and there is nothing wrong with that.
Verbose Musings 