It’s not that I don’t like people.
I’m just kind of an introvert. This is a hot topic right now and a way people are defining themselves thanks to books like Quiet. I bought the book but never read it, A friend of mine said she knows several people who did the exact same thing. I think it’s odd if this is a phenomena – a book a lot of people buy and don’t read. I wonder if people are just putting the book on their coffee table so anyone who sees it won’t expect too much in the way of conversation. But if you’re an introvert chances are not a lot of people will be checking out your coffee table. And I don’t even have a coffee table so I don’t know what my excuse is.
Of course, it’s more complicated than the introvert/extrovert thing. For starters, I don’t like to shower. All the effort to make myself look half-way presentable is exhausting. I need mascara or you can’t see my eyes. Picking out clothes is a small torture. You have to take into account the weather, who you are seeing and where you are going, if you have a clean bra and if it’s a good bra or a ratty bra. You have to put on lotion and deodorant and conceal blotches on your face and secrets in your heart. You have to look like you are put together and that everything is fine, fine, fine. And often, as of late, you are not.
So I stay home a lot. Right now I’m on a leave from work to deal with a few health issues so I’m home even more than usual. I’m hoping it’s a good thing. That I’ll cook healthy meals and work on my novel and binge watch the latest and greatest on Netflix or Prime (any suggestions?). I’m starting PT soon and looking for a pool to swim in that’s warm and rather anonymous, at least as anonymous as you can be in a old lady swim suit that bulges in places it shouldn’t. I want to read and blog and stretch and drink more water. I should learn to meditate and take up yoga and loose weight. Then I’ll emerge in a month or so feeling fabulous and centered.
But even then I may stay in most of the time. I have a lot of loss to work through. A failed marriage is how you might put it. The kind that has ups and downs and bumps and hurdles and then less laughter, more anger and finally nothing…gone. So yeah, I’m home a lot. Everyone says it’s time for you now. But what does that mean? Do I eat, pray love? Do I go on trips with AARP? Do I tweet or Tinder or take up bread baking, scrapbooking, fly fishing? It seems a bit murky to me, this “you time.”
It’s a journey, they say. And it is, I know, I get it. So I keep moving forward. I stare at the leak in the ceiling, think about a new roof, fixing the chimney, painting the bedroom, raking the steppe of leaves in the backyard before it snows on them again. I tinker with the idea of taking an art history class or cleaning the basement. I make lists of people to call and bills to pay. I laugh with my kids and bake muffins. I see good friends, forcing myself outside or having them over for tea, keeping Quiet skillfully camouflaged on the bookshelf next to other one word books that I’ve read and loved like Room and Beloved.
Maybe this is my you time – showing up here, with me, with you out there. Maybe I’ll get to the bottom of things. Dig into past wounds and tell jokes. Or see what you – other writers, bloggers and soul searchers are up to. Because we can talk while I’m in my bathrobe and drinking tea. How great is that for an introvert?
And I don’t want the world to see me
‘Cause I don’t think that they’d understand
When everything’s made to be broken
I just want you to know who I am“
-The Goo Goo Dolls
In the Chair 