“Introverts treasure the close relationships they have stretched so much to make.”~ Adam S. McHugh
It was my choice to come, but I’m not comfortable, here on the surface with you.
I’m uneasy with shifting currents, with bluster and gusting demands for attention, as voices dive and swirl overhead. If I try to speak, my words toss on the waves, or spray away with the wind–a salty rebuke, a briny betrayal of convictions too early exposed.
Why does it feel like conversation is a competition and I’ve left my weapons on the shore?
I don’t know why you glance away at my remark. I can’t detect the meaning behind your unfiltered words, your sudden distraction, your frustrated sigh. You probably don’t understand my frowning intensity, or my stammered, stymied replies. I can’t fathom your serial selfies, you are amazed at my turtled retreat. You say a thing, and mean another, I say a thing and wish I hadn’t, because there was something so much better to be said.
But I won’t know it until you’re out of earshot. Until, in the quiet of dawn, my heart belatedly speaks.
The Introvert’s Invitation
The wild and windblown shallows are not my home–they are where I must come to find you. But I wish you would know my Introvert world, how deep beneath the chit and the chat there is airy calm, the slow, weighted drift of ideas and wonder. There, where words can linger, one finds acceptance and patience for unfashionable questions, for half-shaped answers, for unspoken, subtle delight. In a quiet corner of this sub-marine cavern is a table set only for two.
Some have been willing to join me there. Will you?
A Postscript
I would laminate the words above and hang them around my neck if I thought it would make a difference. In the company of others I feel the need to explain myself, though no one has ever asked. Do you Introverts resonate? Can you Extroverts understand? I recently thumbed through a thesaurus and found this.
Extrovert: outgoing, unselfish, sociable, people-oriented, friendly, amicable, congenial.
Introvert: self-observer, self-absorbed, brooder, muser, shy, bashful, timid, wallflower.
I wonder which type wrote the book…
Photograph by Melanie Hunt
