Sunday Scribblings Post-Prompt "Fortress"
Fortress
I have times when I get, as I tell people, “peopled out”, which means that I've just been around too many people too frequently. It doesn't necessarily mean that I'm so stressed that I can't function, it just means that I need a little bit of time to just be by myself. For my friends and family who don't experience similar episodes of “social overload”, it's extremely difficult to explain.
I try not to go completely underground. I answer my phone and e-mails, but I tend to stay for a while in the land of “No.” I don't volunteer for things. I get cagey about making plans. Most of the time I just offer a vague explanation about “work” or “needing to get things done.” I don't need to be asked if I'm okay or if everything is all right. I don't want to have to explain.
The thing is, it has taken me a long time to understand that there isn't anything wrong with me because I feel that way. Being able to genuinely enjoy the pleasure of your own company to recharge yourself and figure out how to reattach the handle you used to have on things is not wrong or a sin or unnatural. It wasn't until college when I found out there was a word for it. The concept of introvert wasn't anything that I was familiar with until a college psychology class. When I read the description, I felt a startling sense of epiphany. I was reading a description of myself. Someone understood. I wasn't a freak. There wasn't something fundamentally wrong with me. My wiring wasn't all screwed up at all. I'm just an introvert.
Still, that word, because it can be a label as much as a description, carries a certain amount of stigma with it. People can make assumptions about you being awkward and painfully shy or even antisocial. So, I try to just offer up explanations when I feel like elaborating that don't involve that word. It's easy to let misperception turn a label into a prison.
I've stopped knuckling under the pressure to find some other way to describe myself. It doesn't help anyone, especially me. Someone who really wants to know me and really wants to be my friend will either ask me how I know and what that means or will do some research on their own.
He certainly took the time to figure it out when I told him. Instead of asking me, he decided to look it up himself and came to the conclusion that his initial perceptions of me didn't actually change with that additional information. I'm still that woman that likes playing pool, loves watching movies, especially making fun of terrible ones, reads, and writes, and if I don't equal his geekiness I surpass it.
I don't create my own fortress physically. I do it instead with distance when I need it and by taking the time to do things that I have to do by myself. He understands that I have to be the one to tell him it's okay to join me and what it means that I do let him in, even when it's only enough to tell him I need to go for a walk, or a moped ride, or, even just to work on a particular art project. I understand how fortunate I am that he does.
I have times when I get, as I tell people, “peopled out”, which means that I've just been around too many people too frequently. It doesn't necessarily mean that I'm so stressed that I can't function, it just means that I need a little bit of time to just be by myself. For my friends and family who don't experience similar episodes of “social overload”, it's extremely difficult to explain.
I try not to go completely underground. I answer my phone and e-mails, but I tend to stay for a while in the land of “No.” I don't volunteer for things. I get cagey about making plans. Most of the time I just offer a vague explanation about “work” or “needing to get things done.” I don't need to be asked if I'm okay or if everything is all right. I don't want to have to explain.
The thing is, it has taken me a long time to understand that there isn't anything wrong with me because I feel that way. Being able to genuinely enjoy the pleasure of your own company to recharge yourself and figure out how to reattach the handle you used to have on things is not wrong or a sin or unnatural. It wasn't until college when I found out there was a word for it. The concept of introvert wasn't anything that I was familiar with until a college psychology class. When I read the description, I felt a startling sense of epiphany. I was reading a description of myself. Someone understood. I wasn't a freak. There wasn't something fundamentally wrong with me. My wiring wasn't all screwed up at all. I'm just an introvert.
Still, that word, because it can be a label as much as a description, carries a certain amount of stigma with it. People can make assumptions about you being awkward and painfully shy or even antisocial. So, I try to just offer up explanations when I feel like elaborating that don't involve that word. It's easy to let misperception turn a label into a prison.
I've stopped knuckling under the pressure to find some other way to describe myself. It doesn't help anyone, especially me. Someone who really wants to know me and really wants to be my friend will either ask me how I know and what that means or will do some research on their own.
He certainly took the time to figure it out when I told him. Instead of asking me, he decided to look it up himself and came to the conclusion that his initial perceptions of me didn't actually change with that additional information. I'm still that woman that likes playing pool, loves watching movies, especially making fun of terrible ones, reads, and writes, and if I don't equal his geekiness I surpass it.
I don't create my own fortress physically. I do it instead with distance when I need it and by taking the time to do things that I have to do by myself. He understands that I have to be the one to tell him it's okay to join me and what it means that I do let him in, even when it's only enough to tell him I need to go for a walk, or a moped ride, or, even just to work on a particular art project. I understand how fortunate I am that he does.