Introverts: Permission to Seek Distance While Social Distancing
It’s 9:36 in the morning and I awake to two emails, four texts, and an Instagram direct message, the bulk of which were sent at some late hour, far past my self-prescribed bedtime.
I ignore the notifications and slump to the coffee pot, where two more dings assault me from the other room.
Pre-pandemic me would have left my phone on the bed and felt entirely comfortable spinning a lie for why I didn’t return the messages until hours later. Nowadays, I designate a portion of my morning to curl back up under the covers and face the new hard truth: I have no excuse.
But here’s the thing, I do have an excuse. I always did, even if I masked it in falsehoods in the past.
Socializing exhausts me.
“Introversion is a basic personality style characterized by a preference for subdued and solitary experiences […] Introverts do not fear or dislike others, and they are neither shy nor plagued by loneliness. Simply, they derive more pleasure from, and are more energized by, their own inner life than by social events.” — Psychology Today
At the start of the social distancing mandate, I will admit, I was thrilled. On the surface it seemed like an introvert’s dream: ample opportunity for alone time with an inarguable excuse. I stacked my bookshelf, re-upped on canvas, paints, and tea, and began my gradual, long-anticipated transition to seclusion.
Then came the onslaught of FaceTime calls, emails, texts, notifications; a zombie army of long-dead relationships emerged en masse from the nethersphere. The already-established “me time” in my roommate dynamic dissolved as his extroversion waxed impatiently. He’s on the phone, he’s bumping EDM in the bathroom, he’s — God forbid — speaking to me.
Needless to say, everything he could possibly do right now would piss me off, and it’s simply because if I could just turn my phone off, he would be the only thing standing in the way of actually being alone.
And it’s not his fault at all. He’s an extrovert.
And I feel for him, hard. I no longer have the emotional reserves to sit in the living room and offer amends to his social deficits. I don’t feel energized to respond back to calls, texts, and emails because I haven’t had true, serious, unadulterated me time in over a month. It might be difficult to fully realize, especially if you are an extrovert, but unless you live alone and have no anxieties about powering down your device…
Social distancing is incredibly social.
This fact snuck up on me. I figured the whole world would learn the ways of the loner and we would emerge on the other side of this pandemic a population of creatives and philosophers; book nerds and environmentalists. But the truth is, with an unprecedented amount of time on our hands, reaching out to others is only natural, even for an aspiring hermit like myself.
It is perhaps a misunderstanding of introversion that being in the company of others is tiring, or that we fear the act of conversation. It is more precisely socializing which becomes draining beyond a certain threshold, so yes, that includes social media.
Personally, I am closest to peace sitting alone in a half-filled coffee shop. In this ecosystem I am the undisturbed observer: listening, developing my own opinions, theories, narratives, with no pressure to share them, save upon whatever means of writing I’ve buried in my tote bag. I also love grocery stores, concerts, long walks around the city…same concept: near humans, no obligation to engage with them.
I’m not a misanthrope, nor am I agoraphobic; I simply prefer thinking to speaking.
So here I am, stuck in my room, and everyone I ever told I was too busy to respond is now calling my bluff. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate that I have friends who care about me and want to check in. I love my friends and the meaningful conversations we share. In many ways, this quarantine has taught me not to put too much distance between myself and my circle. They have needs, too, and often the indulgence of my introversion reads as neglect, or as resentful towards them.
The way I sought out my distance was also not healthy.
Bottom line, I was lying to the people I held closest, making up small, (what I naively assumed were harmless) vindications for why I waited hours to respond to their texts, ignored their phone calls, skipped happy hour, etc. Quite frankly, I didn’t think they would believe that I was actually an introvert.
When I do venture out into groups, I’m confident and talkative. I can be friendly with a wide variety of people, and I have no problem offering my opinion on even highly controversial matters. This can sometimes make people assume that assessing myself as an introvert is just a means to avoiding them, specifically, as though their own unique brand of conversation irks me.
“Let’s clear one thing up: Introverts do not hate small talk because we dislike people. We hate small talk because we hate the barrier it creates between people.”― Laurie Helgoe, Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life is Your Hidden Strength
The truth is, the reason I’m able to socialize successfully is because I know I’m an introvert, and so schedule my life around charging up my energies in solitude so I don’t feel overwhelmed and shut down when I do seek company. Trust me, if I didn’t take my regular dose of isolation, nobody would want to be around me. Just ask my roommate: I’ve gone full demon bitch in this last week of co-confinement.
Whether you’re introverted or extroverted, your mental health should not suffer in support of others.
While I do LOVE this renewed sense of community, I feel like I’m losing myself in the process. To my fellow introverts grappling with how to maintain connections and keep your sanity, the solution I’ve found is simple: be honest. Making up lies only creates emotional distance that you will have to overexert later to alleviate. If you can reset the narratives around your occasional radio silence, and trust your friends and family will take pity, you foster deeper connections moving forward.
Now is the perfect time to assert your needs. Instinctively, everyone is making adjustments to how they socialize. Seek real space when you need it, and don’t feel silly about doing so.
As warped as it may seem, with a large faction of people out of work and bored, you’re probably socializing far more now than pre-pandemic.
And to my friends and family: keep reaching out, just please don’t take offense if I can’t get back to you immediately. I will get back to you, because I love you, and you have done absolutely nothing wrong.
And finally, to the extroverts:
I recognize your pain, too. As anxious as you feel that you can’t get out and interact with others, we introverts feel just as irritated that we can’t log off and nestle into our favorite reading spot downtown. Just please, don’t make the mistake of assuming that this is easy for any of us.
Be sympathetic of each others’ needs, especially in this time of unavoidable introspection, and come together (and also apart) under one common understanding: social distancing is awful.
Now, kindly go read up on prisons and mental health.
