Imagine the horror of beginning when at the start-up market of new life situations there is never a role in your size available. You are not the funny or the sporty one. Your forte is definitely not small talk. You don’t have a fabulous fashion sense that would instantly make you friends. Clubs and activities your new school offers don’t interest you. You aren’t nerdy enough to be the one everybody comes to in order to hear the correct answers to homework assignments. You are – well, who exactly are you?
You are the introvert. How unfortunate for you, I must say, as it means that your every-day life is inevitably more complicated than that of those who have received the gift of extraversion in birth. You are strangely aware of yourself as well as of everybody else around you almost every minute of your days. You noticed that cold glance some blonde girl – who is approximately 4,567 times more beautiful than you, by the way – threw over to your general direction just now. You feel the current angle of your eyebrows’ arch and question whether it might look a bit too confused, too happy or maybe too uninterested to people around you. You get a headache from being ashamed of that little mystery stain on your left shoe – where did that come from anyway? You realize as if it was being shouted at you that your tone had an accidental slight hostility to it when you said hello to some new acquaintance. You try your best at small talk but your stomach is quietly burning when you hear yourself go on about the price of your asthma medication… And when you
finally
get
home—
familiar fists hit hard, repeatedly, until you are convinced all over again that you should have listened to those words you scribbled in your black, black notebook in the summer of 2007. I mean, who else would know what you deserve than you.
You, at the moment of beginning something new, you know how to straighten your spine smiling, lick your lips moving and curl your hair shining Gossip Girl and Friends up to a kilometre. You are a great actor, actually, that is whilst you are able to come back home every evening, close your door and curtains and breathe for the first time in a day. After a couple of weeks, however, you start lacking energy and so you close your door for the whole weekend. Then maybe for three days. Your flatmates don’t come knocking at the door the whole time as they are used to you spending hermit days.
The worst part is that your pain is not visible. Anyone can see that you’re quite shy even though you can make convincing efforts from time to time. Actually, it isn’t always shyness that is the problem, it is your introverted personality. But, hell, you just spent a year abroad alone, giving presentations and leading group activities in a foreign language in front of thousands of foreign faces. Nothing should be wrong with you then. You are very well able to do wonderful things in your life and you are even keen on trying to develop yourself and thus make your life in this society easier.
These efforts bear fruit for some time. Then comes the occasional afternoon when you stop in the middle of a poem and realize once again that this is never going to be over. You will have to make efforts for the rest of your life and you will ever be able to reach the flow of normal living only once in a while. Even if you did so well at the beginning of this school year, you, who began university in a new city all by yourself and who wasn’t even nervous when you sat down in a classroom for the first time. Your face didn’t smell of fear, you did not have migraine that morning and you spoke to a hundred humans. You did such a good job. You didn’t have to eat alone in the canteen. Victory. Then you smoothly found your way from the library to a new building and a classroom full of expecting eyes – you kept on sipping your coffee and smiled to yourself as you were completely calm. Victory.
What happened next? It is a blur, you can’t get a grip of it, because at some point people became friends and were tagged on Instagram but you… Well, you had found a new, even better wine than that last Syrah you so very much enjoyed. You did still find friendly faces to talk to during lectures, so all was fine…? Then came the freshmen events, however, and you shivered a little when you read on the internet that you had to form groups beforehand in order to participate. After all, you ended up talking with a girl who had added you on Facebook and you joined their group. Victory.
A little later, you were smiling at your books – this is what you like to do, isn’t it! But then, you felt this emptiness in your lungs. You took one, two doses of Ventoline. You poured yourself a little glass of red. You lighted a vanilla-scented candle and tried to remember what makes you relax. You wrote a few lines, oh how great you felt, and you were again with your very own self.
The next day, you were having coffee with some faces you could just match with names and their favourite foods. You kept trying to come up with a reasonable excuse to leave early. It had only been 17 minutes. Why did those people go on about some films you have never seen, celebrities you don’t recognize, events you’re not interested in, cats instead of dogs? Why were you actually doing this ‘hanging out’, even though you felt like a whale in a non-maritime beauty contest? You felt forced as you always do, your life is only 15 percent of what you actually want to do. You cannot see the point of all this suppressing socializing. You are constantly in a role you don’t know the lines for and are not able to relate to. Why were you still in this coffee shop where you couldn’t even breathe?
To wrap up this story of your most recent new beginning: I tip my hat to you, fellow introvert, for now, after some two months of university, I believe you have solved your identity crisis. You have found your little place in the oh-so-chatty community. You have also accepted that you cannot always remain in your holy hermit home and that if you just keep on making efforts, it will all become a little easier after a while. So, congratulations, you have made some progress and you are wholly capable of enjoying this new chapter in your life as greatly as anyone else – even those who have got outgoing nature in their DNA. In spite of your occasional development, those moments, days, years of feeling different, insufficient and lost in the middle of pointless chit-chat – I will have to be frank with you, they will probably never cease to exist.
Your daily challenge is not a deadly disease but it is a personality type that is underrepresented and not nearly enough appreciated in today’s society and media. You can only hope there is a change coming. Maybe one day it will be totally okay to stay in on a Saturday night to read Pride and Prejudice for the fourth time. Maybe one day you will not have to feel guilty for wanting to escape parties after the first 15 minutes. Maybe one day you will be able to forget about excuses. Maybe one day you can tell your friends, without feeling weird, that you are actually going to stay home to write instead of going out with them. Maybe one day you can accept your way of living as an option that you have chosen because it suits you the best, not as a burden that has chosen you as its victim. Maybe one day it will be enough just to be you.
Until then, have a Happy Halloween.