...and I feel fine. (Unapologetically mixing song lyrics since ten minutes ago)
I’m a gregarious introvert. I hide my introversion well; but I’m decidedly introverted. At times, I’m downright asocial. Reactions to this range from bemusement to anger to pity. “You poor thing, how can you stand to be alone on the holidays!!” Apparently, if you don’t enjoy getting together with friends and family all the time but you do it anyway, you’re normal. However, if you actually actively choose to be alone, you’re either weird or an object of pity.
Dude. Wait. What?
I’ve spent the holidays alone, by choice, more than half the time over the last ten years. Now that I’m living further away from my family, I expect that I’ll get to spend more holidays…choosing how I spend my holidays. I can drive across town and visit friends. I can catch a plane and visit family. I can just stay in my pyjamas and relax. Hell, I can get the laundry done. But not being “with somebody” for the holidays is not a cause for major concern for me, and hasn’t been for quite some time.
I did date when in high school and college, and had a few serious relationships. They ended - not tragically, but because we - or, in most cases, I - decided that it would be better to be in a serious relationship with someone we really wanted to be with than to stay in a relationship…just to be in a relationship. (One person was far more afraid of ‘being alone’ than he was interested in ‘being with me’. I don’t care to imagine how things would be if I had stayed in that relationship.) If I meet someone who I really develop a strong connection with, hey, great!! It would be cool to meet a guy who could be an actual partner to me, and let me be the same to him. But I’m not going to actively go out looking for a relationship just to have a relationship.
So why don’t I go spend Thanksgiving with friends or neighbors, if I don’t have a Significant Other? Because spending time around people actually drains me of energy, that’s why. Some people get charged up by social situations. Others don’t get an emotional high, but they do enjoy socializing. For me (and for quite a few others) social situations suck the life out through the soles of my feet. I actually am tired out by social interaction. Socializing is like a game wherein the rules change at random intervals. As I’m never notified when the rules are changing let alone which rules are changing, I’m often caught off-guard by these minor variations in the game. (Then again, since I don’t think I got the same original rulebook as everyone else, it wouldn’t help if I did get the memos.) This is one of the reasons I avoid most social situations where I have to do much beyond sit, listen, and contribute the occasional comment. On the Internet, I have a little bit more control in the ebb and flow of conversations. Pacing is a matter of participating on my time, rather than right then in the moment. (On the Internet, one rarely has the problem of thinking up the perfect riposte five minutes too late. [Five weeks…perhaps. But not five minutes.]) If I am feeling tired, or hungry, or momentarily peeved, that’s okay. The conversations will be there in ten minutes, twenty minutes, even hours later. And I don’t have to wear a certain type of outfit. I can be in the aforementioned pyjamas and it’s all good.
My mom is convinced that I “make friends easily”. Not so. I know how to say the initial polite inconsequentials that, to her, seem like “making friends”. I just never bother to build things beyond nodding acquaintances. In middle and high school, I tried having some parties because that seemed like The Thing To Do: maybe if I do X-Y-Z, that’s normal and I’ll be happy…a thought process that oh so many of us go through over and over and over, just changing the values for X-Y-Z. I didn’t continue hosting parties because I didn’t experience any joy in planning the events, and the events themselves were fairly forgettable. Thus now, when I want to get together with friends, I’ll call up some people and meet them somewhere for coffee, or a walk, or both. If they aren’t available or don’t care to come, no worries. I can still go walking or get coffee on my own; and I haven’t spent lots of time stressing and planning.
People like me tend to disappear from the radar. The majority of people don’t realize that there do exist people who prefer to spend time alone and who are not misanthropic misers just waiting for the love of a good man/woman/adorable cherubic child to snap us out of the cold fog that is our lonely miserable non-social life. But trust me…we exist. When someone graciously turns down your next invitation to share your Thanksgiving table, realize that it may be someone who’s in an emotional fugue - or it may be one of us, those who need more time away from people than we need time with people.
(Triple bonus points for anyone who can name BOTH musical references in the post title and blurb.)
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