Just because you’re an extrovert doesn’t mean you’re exactly the life of the party.
I fear for most of my adolescence I was the exact opposite. I was in fact a jester of sorts. I did tumbling on the playground in hopes of gaining notice of people. I leaned into being a total weirdo to gain laughs. I wanted nothing more in life than a big friend group and people to hang around 24/7. I didn’t care where the attention came from, I just knew I craved the intimacy and time spent with other people so badly. Most of the time what I was getting was a lot of side eyes and weird looks. It was always clear that I was a social other, but it was a sacrifice—though it hurt—that I was strangely willing to make.
I never really got what I was looking for. In elementary school (unbeknownst to me, thank god) I was an odd one out. In middle school I was a laughing stock. In high school I was a social floater. Most close friendships I made shifted from year to year, and deep down I knew they were honestly quite shallow.
Now in college, I can confidently say I have a friend group as well as many good friends. But, the issue there is that many of them (if not all of them to be honest) are introverts. That’s not to say I think it’s a problem. I’ve always admired the fact that many people gain their energy from being by themselves. I love the picture that get’s painted by others who enjoy their solitude, and what that relationship with silence can look like. Still, it’s not my reality. Much of my time with friends is broken up by their much needed time to recharge. It’s inspired me to find ways to enjoy my solitude more often. As much as I like this alone time thing though, I think it’s starting to take its toll.
It’s not uncommon knowledge that extroverts get their energy from being in social situations. I love being out and about, talking to strangers, public speaking, making new friends, going out, spending hours upon hours chatting with people I know and love.
I still haven’t decided whether this is a flaw in my psyche or not.
See, on one hand, I do genuinely thrive on these things. On another, I find when I’m not doing them, I get really lonely. Like, really lonely. I’ve tried to ignore it for a long time. Anytime I’ve expressed this feeling to other people, I’ve always been told that I just need to be better at spending time with myself.
Well, I have, and honestly, props to me. Being an extrovert and learning to be ok by yourself are two different things that are not often synonymous, and very often difficult to be. I love hanging out with myself. I’ve learned to pick up my hobbies rather than my phone. I don’t have social media anymore so my knee jerk is to always text people about my day, but I’ve even opted to stop doing that as a form of personal rebellion from my nature. I love talking to myself, spending time with myself, doing things on my own time. That was one of the things I missed the most about being single that I’ve gotten back. I get to live life on my own time, by my own rules, and I get to be a lot more selfish with my decisions on what I want to do on a day to day.
I’ve scoured the internet for anything on loneliness as an extrovert. I mostly just wanted to know if it was normal to feel this sad and lonely by myself, but instead I get page after page of articles that talk about how to better spend time by yourself as an extrovert. I still read them in hopes that maybe there’s just something that I’m missing in this grand equation of satisfaction in being completely on my own. The number one thing that everything talks about is time, but that’s the frustrating part.
I’ve had nothing but time to be by myself.
And therein lies the truth of the matter. I know I like myself because I was forced to hang out with only myself for most of my life. The other, the weirdo, the social floater. I had to learn to enjoy my own solitude out of survival, because if I didn’t, lord, I don’t know what would have happened to me.
I’ve always been terrified of people leaving me. Not the casual acquaintances. The close relationships that matter most. I have a personality that is very in your face. I know this. I also know that for many people, it’s overwhelming and quite exhausting to be around 24/7. Trust me bro, imagine living in it. I even exhaust myself with how loud I feel like I have to be just to get an ounce of the interactions that I crave. I often feel embarrassed by my own outgoingness, and it only gets worse when I’m left on delivered, or the people I want to hang out with are busy. I assume an understanding that maybe my personality just isn’t compatible with the people around me, that I’m being too needy, or that people just don’t want to want to hang out with me.
The longer I’m alone, the more I find myself spiraling. Do these people actually like me? Who am I actually close to? Then I rationalize my feelings, and then I get embarrassed by my want for social interaction. I’ll spiral myself into action, find someone to talk to, and then I just feel hit with the cycle all over again. I don’t want people to feel like they have to hang out with me, I want people to feel like they want to hang out with me, and that doesn’t always feel like the case when you’re the person who jumps at the opportunity to make plans, or knows she would get together with her besties every other day of the week and hang out if it was up to her.
This feeling of anxiety when other people aren’t ready to reciprocate my want for social interaction has been the birthing place of a lot anxious social habits. I’m a chronic people pleaser, always up for plans, an (often unnecessarily) loud person, and someone who’s also kind of scared of forming more intimate relationships in fear of learning my presence isn’t actually that enjoyable to be around.
Since my breakup I’ve spent most of my time in general solitude. If I go anywhere, it’s usually by myself, and if I’m anywhere after my classes or work, it’s usually by myself. I didn’t hate it for a while. Again, it felt like I had some old freedom back. Something I didn’t know before I panic researched how normal it was to feel lonely as an extrovert, was after a while, solitude and isolation can give extroverts the same drained feeling that introverts get when they’ve had too much social stimulation.
I hate it.
The older I get, the more I realize just how much solitude seems to be built in the growing pains of life, and it’s really starting to freak me out. The drained feeling is not a fun feeling to have, and it’s especially on the spooky side as someone who will fall into self isolation and/or self ridicule as a response to feeling this way. The longer I go without talking to people, the more often I begin to feel that perhaps my presence is something that’s unwarranted or not wanted, so I force myself into silence.
Yes, I’m finally seeking a therapist. Yes, she will be hearing about all of this come my next appointment.
All of this to say, I wish I could spend an endless amount of time enjoying my own company, but unfortunately my energy is derived from sharing my time and energy with, well…everyone. I don’t know if this is good or bad anymore. On some days it feels like a gift, and on days like this I just feel lonely and unfulfilled. I’m not sure if it’s possible to force a personality change like extroversion to introversion, but I wonder if that’s possible. Maybe that’s a life goal to add to the list.
In the meantime, I’ll sit in the expanse that is my thoughts and try and keep the voices at bay, but those little fuckers make no promises, so this might fair to be a lot more gruesome of a journey than I thought.