The Loud Mind Of A Quiet Person

Chapter V- Personality

Being an introvert

    Being an introvert can be very empowering once you know enough about it. I mentioned earlier that the fact that I am an introvert was the first think I had learned about my personality. It is also tied to anxiety and overthinking. More exactly, if you are an introvert person you are likely to have them. It is nice to know as an introvert that you must not rely on human interactions to have fun and enjoy your day. You can read, sing, dance, paint, watch movies and TV series and have an awesome day without engaging in social activities. It is a very useful thing to enjoy your solitude and never feel bored by your time alone. There is though a very fine line between solitude and loneliness, but I will talk about loneliness more in a following chapter. Not only can I spend days totally fine and happy without much social interaction, but except for the conversations I want with my close people in life, these social interactions drain my energy. An introvert cannot escape some such social interactions because we go to school, work etc. I spent most of my breaks during University plugging in my earphones so that I can listen to music, but most importantly, stop the background sound.

Now, let's talk about some prejudices about introverts. We are not anti-social and we like to talk! When we feel comfortable around certain people due to their similar energy, we talk more than average. It happened so many times to hear from people the eternal question for introverts:" Why are you so quiet? ". The answer: because I did not feel like talking. If I had something to say, I would. I literally open my mouth just when I feel that I can contribute to the discussion. I won't talk just because I did not say a word in the last fifteen minutes or because it is quiet and I should feel responsible to break the silence with my words. Most of the times, during social gatherings I just observe things. I do not premeditate this. It is a thing I do by default. I am not comfortable at all doing small talk or participating in forced conversations. No, I do not want to gossip and I do not want to talk behind someone's back just because other people might find it cool. My interior world is vast and complex. If I can share some of these thoughts with other people it is lovely. (I guess I am doing this right now). If not, there is literally no problem. I will mind my own business like I always do. I felt so weird during family gatherings. I enjoyed the food though. That was a thing to look forward to for me. But, except this little escape, people were talking about unimportant things to me. I do not judge though. If they spoke about them, they must feel important to them. I was in difficult situations when I had to talk. Randomly, I was asked questions because people thought I am shy and do not want to talk. They were not totally wrong. I just had no reason to talk, that was all. Their questions were the same every time: "How is going with school?" and "How is it going with girls?"

If I am an introvert, this should not mean that I am against extroverts. It would be lame. But I am proud of myself that I always have my earphones in my pockets. I used to travel four hours with the train back and forth to Bucharest. Earphones saved me because it the short moments between the next songs follow I hear a lot of noise. But it is not about the noise the most, it is about the topics: gossip and hate. I do not quite get yet how people can talk in public as if they are in private. I remember when I went to Electric Castle, I spoke with my best friend a sentence in 10 minutes average let's say. Most of the time, we listened music using our earphones. If people are excited about something, it is very good. I should not judge the topics either. But I am totally against being comfortable at the expense of other's peace. I remember recently being in a bus going to a bank and some teenagers played music on speaker so loud that my earphones at the maximum level could not cover the noise. Even though I was kind of safe because I could fight against the noise, I had the urge to go to them and ask them to reduce the volume, with all my social anxiety in effect, just because I imagined how tormenting it was for others.