So This is What’s Wrong With Me

It was after 8pm and my spouse, youngest son, and I were just sitting down to dinner in a restaurant. I had started the work day around 6:30am with answering E-mails, and with the exception of the time it took to uselessly pit my toothbrush against another stubborn morning of coffee breath, get dressed, and throw on some war paint, I had been at it all day. “At it” usually means I have a to-do list that is 1/2 to one page long, from which I get to check off between two and four things, the rest of the day being spent responding to the spontaneity of other people’s urgent inquiries. (It’s the nature of the job when keeping office hours and is equally as important as my to-do list, so please do not read this as a complaint). So halfway through our meal, when my husband raised up his left hand which resembles the shape of a smartphone, and announced while wiggling his thumb into his palm, “Hey, let’s go to a 10:30 movie tonight,” I thought I might implode from the internal freak-out that blew up inside of me. Like a puffer fish trapped in a small cage, protruding from all the crevices it’s poor little rubbery flesh and eyeballs can find. This is about the time he and my son look at me like I’m a space alien.

And all this did was kick-start the self-loathing of the person that I am. What is wrong with me? Why can’t I be fun, and energetic, and full of life, like all the people I admire? Like the person I wish I were? Why does the idea of robbing the evening of a few extra hours out on the town with the family I miss all day long feel like a trap? Why does this sound like the worst idea ever while two out of three of us are boiling with adventure? Why do I just want to go home, where I will be content to be near them, even though my face will be planted face-down in a saliva-moistened couch cushion by 10:30pm, while they are watching a DVD and posting pictures of me on their favorite social media feed. I know I always fall asleep. It’s because I am content when I am at home and they are near. They always take it as an insult, but in my martian I-am-not-you language, it’s actually a compliment. Like belching at the dinner table.

And then I read this article posted by Barry Freese on Facebook:

http://m.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2003/03/caring-for-your-introvert/302696/

(You really have to at least skim it before the rest of this will make sense to you).

So maybe I’m not the degradation of the slime in the pit of selfish human sloth that I thought I was. The most resonating parts:

“Hell is other people at breakfast.”

“It is very difficult for an introvert to understand an extrovert.”  This explains why when I respond, “But I’ve been at work all day,” my husband takes it that I imply that he doesn’t really work.

And the part about nipping and yapping, or something like that.

And the part about being mistaken as aloof, arrogant, horrible, and arrogant. That would be my paraphrase.

I will admit, I am eternally annoyed by extroverts who claim to be introverts. They have no clue how misunderstood we feel when they do that.

But all this is to say, I feel let off the hook today for being the person that I am. Even though my extroverted friends and family probably politely de-friend me in real life because I randomly make them feel like they are bothering me and they don’t appreciate or have time to deal with my delicateness. I get that. I don’t like me sometimes either. I wish I had more friends; I just don’t have the physical, emotional, and cognitive energy that it takes to invest in keeping a lot of close relationships, especially given the nature of the work that I do. But it does help me to know that my brain only has the capacity to take in so much in a day before it overloads, and that the way that I am wired has no bearing on my capacity to carry love and adoration for the people who matter most to me, and that I am not defective; I’m just different. It just means that I express my love in socially awkward ways, like face-planting in drool on the couch when they are near.