The Introvert's Dilemma

It begins, as is often the case, with the mother. My mother abandoned me when I was a baby. I never got over it. You never do! Oh sure, there are times when you can almost convince yourself otherwise. You say to yourself that you’re an adult now, with children of your own, and that it’s time to let go of formative traumas so you can attain something approximating peace. 

It would be wonderful if that’s how it worked. But it doesn’t. The pain of parental abandonment never goes away. It’s a scar that never fully heals and inflicts permanent, irrevocable and profound damage. 

When my mother decided to live her life without me or my older sister I assumed, not without reason, that if my mother, the woman who carried me in her womb for nine months and then experienced the agony of childbirth just so that I could exist, no longer wanted to have to do anything with me then no one else would either. 

I grew up thinking of myself as fundamentally unlovable. I didn’t know how to make friends or to keep them. The world terrified me. I was convinced that it contained only failure, rejection and heartbreak. 

Oh how I wish this was true!

So I did what introverts often do. I retreated into myself for the sake of survival. I assumed that I was doing people a favor by not trying to befriend them. 

I grew up feeling lonely and sad and tormented by the introvert’s dilemma. As an introvert I am terrified of human interaction. But I NEED people. We all need people. No one can make it entirely on their own, particularly if they’re broke, damn near incapacitated by Depression, Anxiety and various other modern maladies and just barely hanging on, the way I am at the moment. 

Then I went to Madison for college. As with a lot of painfully shy introverts, college was the best thing that ever happened to me. It felt like I had to suffer through the awful crucible of a Chicago public high school education so I could go to a hippie wonderland full of drugs and sex and weird people. 

I found my people and my place as a staff writer for The A.V. Club. For the first time in my life I felt like I had something to offer beyond awkwardness and social discomfort. That pride was inextricably rooted in being part of something bigger than myself that people loved. I was able to piggy-back on the popularity of America’s Finest News Source and its cult entertainment section because I felt, deep in my gut and for understandable reasons, that people did not, and could not, like me as a person. 

I found my people. Then I lost my people. That hurt like hell. It was analogous to the pain of parental abandonment but different because the people who were once your friends know you and still chose to reject you. 

I assumed that people did not like me or want to continue to have a relationship with me until one by one and all at once these essential relationships faded into nothingness and I felt myself feeling alone in a new and terrifying way. 

I need people. I want people. I need help. But everything inside me says to keep to myself so I don’t end up getting hurt all over again. 

Introverts like myself invariably need to leave their bubble in order to really live and not just remain technically alive but that hasn’t turned out terribly well in the past and my self-esteem and confidence are, if not at all-time lows, then not what I want or need them to be.  

The older you get, the easier it becomes to think that the world does not have a place for you and that there is nowhere that you belong. I know that I belong on this site and in this blog but that’s just not enough, financially, and I’m fairly certain that it will never be enough. I’m going to have to be a lot less introverted if I am ever going to over to get through the funk that I’m in and be in a safe place that feels happy and sustainable again. 

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