Depends on who I am with and it depends on the book. Can’t I do both if I am with a great group of people and it is a really good book? It really depends on the day. I know most personality tests and quizzes assume that you are either introverted or extroverted. However, if you are like me, you may have a place in between both categories. It really just depends on the day, how you woke up or how your week has been going. Some call us ambiverts, fake extroverts, pretend extroverts and extroverted introverts. Personally, I like extroverted introverts. It sounds cool. Regardless of how we are described, we do exist and here are three things we wish people would understand:
1. Our thoughts are running a million miles a minute. We are almost drowning in them
At times, we ask that you leave us alone with our thoughts. We are not trying to be rude but we can’t help but ignore people some days. There are days where we keep to ourselves because we could not be bothered to juggle socializing and keeping up with our own thoughts. Other days, we are too talkative because we have so many thoughts to share. It is almost like word vomit, we can’t stop and we are sorry. So, take us as we are. We are living in our thoughts and we don’t want to move out, ever.
2. Since this goes hand in hand with the aforementioned, we do fall off the face of the earth.
We come back to Earth… eventually. Though we may be the life of the party, we like our alone time. Sometimes the silence is better. Especially after a long day of music, people talking, phones ringing and all the smiling, we often do like our alone time where we can just have a blank face and the sweet sound of… nothing. This can last sometimes for hours so don’t take it personally. Don’t think of it as a warning sign and don’t ask us what is wrong. Think of it as us recharging so we can be our charming, smiling, attached to our phones, people-loving selves again.
3. Small Talk
We can do it, we can talk about rain and sun. We can talk about the traffic, prices of gas or upcoming local events. In fact, we are fantastic at it. We know it pleases the general public and we know that is what most people really want from us anyways. We are the talkative waitress, barista or customer service representative. It bothers us immensely when the conversation is not genuine but life goes on. We go back home to the ones we can have deep conversations with and come back the next day to start all over with small talk with strangers. All in all, we wish that people would stop putting us in one category or the other. We don’t care if there aren’t any Facebook Quizzes geared towards our category (though, that’d be nice) or if we fit perfectly into the normal two. We don’t care much about how much the sun is shining this week or how awful the traffic was on your way to us (unless you have a really dramatic story) We care if we get our much needed silence to recharge, our meaningful conversations, our family not placing out a police report if we fall off the face of the earth and our friends dealing with our word vomit. Featured photo credit: Group Of People Socialising In Front Of Eifel Tower At Night by Ed Gregory via stokpic.com
