Contemplating My Introversion

Unless I stay nearby my close friends at a party, I become exhausted within the first two hours. I was led to believe this is a serious flaw - one should be able to socialize at ease in all such light-hearted occasions. But this isn't the case for introverts.

What muddies the water is the fact that for much of my life, I suffered from social anxiety - and where this ends and my introversion begins, I still don't quite know. Before I began high school, I took the Meyers Briggs Personality test, and the results showed that my type is Introverted Intuitive Feeling Perceiving - INFP. This is a pretty in-depth definition.

In some ways I don't match up with the definition - I'm not a perfectionist, I'm too lazy; I'm not focused on making the world a better place, unless I become one of those types who thinks they're writing can change the world (shudder); I am intuitive about people, but I find this hampers me as much as it helps - I have a pretty good sense of who is trustworthy and who is not, but I also over-generalize people and make assumptions of them with little evidence; Sometimes I am considerate, other times I could give a shit as to someone else's tribulations; This thing says I'm most likely a talented writer - thank you, impersonal website.

It is normal for me to want to be quiet, unless I'm around people I have a lot of respect or admiration for - then I can't shut up. It is unfair to be told that I need to be more outgoing, or more talkative. Extroverted girls, especially, get rather uncomfortable around me because I don't talk much, so they think I may be silently judging them (sometimes this is true, but surely they've done something to deserve my judgement). This leads to rather humorous types of conflict wherein I'm told I need to be more laid-back - so that over-burdening my brain with the excruciating minutaie of small talk is somehow a relaxing passtime. At any rate, if I have a salient thought, I will express it, and if I don't, I'll keep my trap shut. It is tiresome listening to people talk for long swaths of time. I view it as abnormal for someone to want to talk to others even if they haven't much to say at the time. This is why the thought of going on a date with someone I don't know very well gives me the night terrors.

So next time you call me stoic, give some thought to what I am doing that makes me look so stoic. I'm thinking, cogently, of something you likely couldn't process. Not that I'm smarter, just rarer.