There are people who seem to be active all the time, who like to talk a lot, who love to meet new people, to exchange ideas, to communicate, to celebrate nights in noisy clubs and with too many strangers. Who are absorbed in making and maintaining contacts and are more at war with being alone. I am definitely not someone like that - I can say that much now.
No, I am not shy
And I'd be lying if I said right after that that I lived in harmony with it throughout and that it was totally okay for me not to belong to the active-communicative species that consumes sensory impressions with pleasure like I experience chocolate cake on selected days and social seclusion as solitary confinement.
For the opposite is the case: I celebrate the days when I can be alone with myself and my thoughts. Sometimes they are already too much for me - and further sensory impressions (by whomever) are more than out of place in such hours. This should not have got too close to anyone. But I don't even have to have my beloved around me 24/7.
A plant shrinks with too much water. After a watering day, I may need many hours until the next water charge is necessary. I am the one who can sit at home among heaps of books, scribbled pages of paper, ribbed wool balls, sketches, fragments of prose and poetry and feel like in a palace.
Silence as currency. Not to be outweighed by any gold in the world.
I am the one who walks alone or in a cozy togetherness in museums and above all in botanical gardens. One of those who has to process sensations for a long time and let impressions from outside run three times through all the brain twists and turns and through the whole body felt before she is ready to process them communicatively.
She gets too much when she has to phone or Skype, is overwhelmed by two strangers at once (because she can't get involved enough with one person) and for whom a step out of the front door sometimes feels like setting off on a whitewater expedition.
It takes a long time to answer, because the right words (in the sense of unerring on both a logical and an empathic level) don't always want to slide to the tip of the tongue right away, and it asks itself involuntarily whether hesitation could be understood as slow thinking, i.e. lack of intelligence.
But I am also the one who can argue clearly, objectively and (at least that's what they say about me) razor-sharply in a discussion - once she's made friends with the idea of being the center of attention for a while now and catching a good day.
I am also the one who knows who she is (although not necessarily what she wants, but who knows), what she can and wants to do. She has enough self-confidence to recognize injustices immediately and to categorize them appropriately - and if
necessary, to react accordingly.
For a long time shyness was a companion in my childhood - but over the years almost exclusively the introversion has remained.
(Of course, there are also situations in which I am shy - but they are not the rule and certainly not so dominant that they could function as a sign of a character trait.)
Not every time I'm quiet, I'm shy, too. Although the two qualities look the same from the outside, they feel fundamentally different. Someone who is above all shy suffers from it and would like to dare more. I usually feel extremely comfortable being quiet because I don't need to talk at that moment. I am primarily introverted. But as a result sometimes shy.
The crucial difference between introversion and shyness is that introverts, who aren't also shy, actually feel comfortable with their skin and behavior most of the time. They're not just so that they can't go out three nights in a row to celebrate and immediately make the best friend after the first contact with you. They don't even want it.
As an introvert, I have an invisible wall around me - which is an inappropriate picture again, as it conveys the snail-like retreat of a shy person. This wall is perhaps better described as a semipermeable membrane: some things can go in and out, others stay (for now) outside (and inside).
In my case, this means that people who are similarly quiet and not loud and energy-consuming (because they demand attention) get in and out much earlier and better. With them, a band is formed faster, the sparks jump over better. Because you somehow understand each other and feel after the first sniff that you don't have to play the (extremely energy-sapping) game of the shallowly splashing conversation on devil come out.
Whereas the bigger chunks are at the same time those who are denied access to a little more impartiality due to the tension that the permanent social confrontation with them requires.
That sounds somewhat discriminatory. Ultimately, however, it's a kind of reflex-like protective mechanism that prevents me from shooting over the red mark with my energy budget, which is always on the verge of emergency reserves in the wild anyway.
Because on some days it is - I described it - already an achievement to go among people.
To also bring about a communication in which one is classified as sympathetic (and not arrogant, depressed or shy) because of the conventionally prescribed openness and responsiveness - that borders on mastery.
And I notice again and again (and sometimes ignore this fact just as deliberately as latently masochistically) that after socially active days I need at least one just for myself. To get thoughts and feelings from the roller coaster and from my head and to do something productive with them. Usually, this flows into something artistic and artistic - the classical form of processing.
To be continued...