On being an introvert who is not shy

I read something last week by psychotherapist Martha Crawford whose brain clearly operates at a higher frequency than mine. I posit this because I read the piece and then I thought about it ::makes thinking sound with mouth DURRRR:: and then I read it again and thought about it some more and the flickers sparked like a strand of Christmas lights and my brain nodded yes. YES! Yes. There I am. I am over there, with the introverts.

Here is the illuminating thought from that read: I am a tricky kind of introvert because I am an introvert who is not shy. I masquerade as someone who is interested in the exteriors because, as the author of the piece writes, I am good with words and enthusiasm is in heavy supply in my pocket. I am witty and not awkward {all the time}. I am an introvert who is not afraid of talking to people, who never had a goth phase, who has friends on and off the internets. Crawford says there's no other career but psychotherapy for her. For a long time I doubted myself as a journalist because I'm not a news junkie like a journalist should be. But put me in a room and let me probe the mind of a career criminal or a Miss California--tell me how you really feel--and I am in my element.

I have always preferred to exist in the inner sphere, to be involved and to spend long hours pondering and keying into the inner worlds of others. Large crowds make me so nervous and interacting on surface level drains my battery like woah. I know this is not a flaw, I know this is how I am wired and it is to be celebrated. I've taken the Myers-Briggs tests and I know how all about Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking. I know how much I should be embracing the introvert within.

The problem comes in having been pegged so often as an extrovert. My sister and I attended an all-girls high school (shout-out to MHS Blue Streaks--holla!). Do you know what it looks like to spend four years with 800+ mostly overprivileged suburban not-yet-womens? It looks like a huge sorority, built on the pillars of overachievement and preppy clothes. It is really hard to be an introvert because your social survival depends on extroversion. There are no boys to spur the extroversion, shouting with their suddenly deep man voices through the halls, pulling you out of a crowd, clowning around in class. It's just you, the body politic of the teenage girl. Extroversion is rewarded. Introversion is just too weird; go take that to the poetry club.

So I faked it until I made it in high school. I had many acquaintances. I had very few close friends who knew what was happening in my inner world.

When I got to college, the jig was up. I had to live in community, to share showers with 30+ women on my floor, to coexist in a cinderblock cell with a complete stranger (shout-out to ya, Tiff!). I was so desperately lonely my freshman year and to be honest, I had no idea why. I was motoring around trying to extrovert myself and I could not make any of the flies stick to the honey. My saving grace came the next year when I became an RA. I got a single room to myself where I could stare at my Christmas lights for hours and listen to Counting Crows "Long December" on repeat. I could go out of my room and interact with any number of amazing women. And then I could retreat back to my sanctuary of books and dim lights.

Just a couple of months before we got married, I was doing yoga in my underoos on the floor of my single girl room and I realized: this would soon end. Like, forever. I was lamenting this to my co-worker Kamau at the time and Kamau was all, "Um, Kendra? You know he's going to see you in even less than your underoos, right?" And I was, Yes. That's not the part that bothers me. The part that is so disruptive is the part another person being there, blowing up my meditation spot with his snoring.

Loverpants and I had a good first year of marriage to adjust to each other's need for quiet (me) and interaction (him). Um, WHO AM I KIDDING? I cried the entire first year wondering why I was such a jerk and why didn't I like to talk to my husby. Well, I'm still a jerk 8 years later, but I'm also an introvert and maybe the two aren't mutually exclusive of one another, but the latter involves some self-care.

Having kids has broken down so many introversion allowances for me. I am neither allowed the physical space nor do I need the thought space that I once was afforded, and it's good. My kids are two wrecking balls against the edifice of my introversion, and I wouldn't have it any other way. The soundtrack of my life MAMA? MAMAAAA! reminds me that I am not alone. Their love, especially, with their downy little cheeks against my face and their whispered pleas for more snuggles and marshmallows, have a special power to penetrate, and remind me that I am not alone on the outside, and their love is there keeping me company even on the inside.

P.S. Last day to enter the Easy Canvas Print contest!

Making friends in a post-freshman orientation world

Where I work and play, the bees are buzzing and it is time to make honey.  That is, the first year students are slowly trickling back into the utopia we call Campus and soon waves of their elder classmen will join them. Their friendships and acquaintances will be fostered by orientations and organized meet and greets, and I will feel anguish for them because of all the forced extroversion it takes to get through the first few weeks of school. Is all the ice broken yet or do we need more icebreakers? I will also feel a tinge of envy, because after this? There are few times in life when you are starting something new along with everyone else in the room, besides the teacher.

I think this makes it hard to make friends as an adult, sometimes. The gal behind you in yoga is the grand poobah of bikram, and you are only a sweaty novice. The colleague whose cube is diagonal from yours is so cool. But he's been there for years and is a little jaded.

A  fringe benefit of becoming a parent is that a whole new orientation begins. It is less orderly but it is needed more than any other time. Excepting maybe orientation for the Peace Corps. When your life's geography suddenly shifts from the coordinates of places you had once spent time, e.g. uninterrupted moments in the dressing room at Banana Republic, to slightly less enchanting places called Tot Lot and Little Gym and the playland at McDonald's, you need people who will be miserable good company there with you. Parenting young children can be so lonely, and there on the island where the language spoken is in signs and phrases repeated over and over and over, a person can start to go crazy and forget his or her first language, the language of grown-up conversation.

I am forever blessed by the parents in our neighborhood that I first met when we lived in Boston. They are the dearest of friends, the besthearted of people, and the most generous of spirit that I will likely encounter this side of Heaven.

We got to visit our friends Acey and Sonya and their three beauts this past weekend in Savannah (with a pit stop to see Euni and Jeff in ATL - holla!!), because we don't get to Savannah nearly enough, three times in four months is just totally NOT enough times in Eastern Georgia for one famiLee!

Our children are older and speak a less fractured language and together they played long hours in the hot sun. But we, their parents, are still speaking a language of camaraderie, freely associated song lyrics from our childhoods, and the kind of laughter that makes one's face hurt.

When we are younger, the moment of recognition that someone is a friend is usually born of a clear commonality. Oh, you, too, like "My So-Called Life" as much as I do? Let us wax poetic about how well we like it and do it as much as possible. Friendship.

On the island of parenting small children, I have found that the moment of recognition that we are indeed friends who can be relied upon and trusted with confidences and dreams is when we get to share in something like this and we are enriched by it and can't wait for it to happen again: Mama, can we paint our vaginas? Yes, that happened in the space of this past weekend and it will forever be etched on my heart, the heart of a parent of young children who was made not so alone by the best of friends.

Chipmunk walks into a bar. err. Bedroom.

The little man who lives with me, the one who, if whining were a full-time job would be making six figures, was napping on the floor of my in-laws' bedroom yesterday afternoon. I was also in a similar position on the floor when I looked up to see a chipmunk bounding across the carpet, toward the bathroom. The chipmunk did not appear to be running from anything or anyone. Rather, it gamboled across the room like a schoolgirl excitedly returning home with an "A" on her astronomy test. Yipee! Got 'em all right! And that Pluto question didn't trip her up! No sir! NOT a planet no mo'!

I knew immediately it was a chipmunk, as I am practically a woodland creature expert having grown up in the arboreal 'burbs of the Mid-west, and yet I kept examining the chipmunk because I knew I was going to have to report to my father-in-law that there was a chipmunk in his house and I needed to be absolutely certain that this was not another rodent or similar cavorting pestilence. There was no doubt this was a descendent of Uncles Chip and Dale, however. The spots and the lack of long tail and the gambol. Definitely a member of the species chippus munkeitus.

[showmyads]

An all out pursuit of the speckled li'l imposter ensued once my father-in-law finally accepted that this wasn't just a white girl calling a runaway hamster a chipmunk. My father-in-law rooted through the closets and under clothespiles and under beds. He saw the creature, and as Loverpants said, "Well, two people have seen it, so I guess that means it was really a chipmunk."

Hours later, my father-in-law said he saw the chipmunk escape once he opened the garage door.

I'm going to trust that this house is now chipmunk-free, lest I be tempted to reenact that scene with the little old woman and the shotgun in Ratatouille.

When the chipmunk (or one of his other squatter friends--perish the thought!) finally exited the building, I thought about how uncommon this experience was.

Not only the part about the chipmunk. But the part about the problem exiting the way it came in.

***

A diagnosis comes, a check bounces.  We are eager to be on the other side of this mess. We want to know the way out. But often in the dark theater of our lives, the glowing EXIT sign is a misnomer. It is a door that leads right back into the same dark theater, unless we can figure out how we got there in the first place.

How often do we struggle with something that is of our own making, or of our own invitation? When we have stress, do we often cast the blame on situations beyond our control? Or do we examine the landscape and see that we very much built the buildings casting shadows, and paved the roads that are now filled with potholes.

The chipmunk got into the house for reasons unknown but surely guessed: a pattern of careless door closing, a clandestine opening in the attic. It got out, but it could once again scare the ever living snot out of me tomorrow unless conscious changes are made.

***

My children borrow phrases from the Rescue Bots, the new, significantly more demented generation of Transformers. They sing the theme songs in their idle moments. They reenact scenes for me. And I struggle to remember whether I paid my credit card bill this month but I can bust out the entire rhyme of "Miss Suzy had a Steamboat" at the drop of a dime.

I can't unlearn or unsee or unhear some things rattling around inside of me. My children, their spongey minds and hearts ready to absorb everything around them (except my pleas to brush their teeth), are no different. For now, I can still generally audit most of the material they are absorbing. I still feel convicted to guard these little ones' hearts more vigilantly. Turns out that chipmunk got in he hasn't quite left yet. Not from my head at least.