I wasn’t always a shy person. As a kid, I never stopped talking and was often the lead in school plays, but then puberty hit and it’s like my polarity reversed. I became the girl who sat and read a book during recess when she wasn’t using the time to get ahead on her homework.
In my defense: I wasn’t “brown-nosing,” but it was actually an early sign of my natural inclination toward efficiency. If I did the homework at recess, it meant I didn’t actually have to do anything at home.
Of course, I didn’t really understand the logic behind my actions yet, and kids just thought I was being a teachers’ pet.
(Can we all agree that doing your homework isn’t sucking up to the teacher? Like, there was no extra credit here. I was completing the bare minimum of work expected of all the students.)
And that’s when I was first introduced to the idea of the “extrovert ideal,” though I didn’t know the correct terminology yet.
It wasn’t until late-high school when I started to understand that being quiet and thoughtful wasn’t a flaw, but an advantage. In college, the chance to meet new peers allowed me to encounter the wide variety of people on the introvert-extrovert spectrum.
But now, instead of thinking that shyness makes me somehow wrong, I know that it just makes me me. When I’m standing to the side at a party, I’m not waiting for a friendly extrovert to pull me onto the dance floor.
I’m waiting for the other introverts to find me so that we can find a comfy corner to chat, debate, and laugh in the way we most enjoy ourselves.
