I never said I wanted to be alone: An introvert's tale“You gotta look people in the eye or they’ll think you’re a snob.” Mom elbowed me in the ribs as we walked through the all-too-familiar church doors and shook hands with the rubber faced greeters and their Mr. Potatohead smiles. I looked up in time to see them exchange knowing glances with my mom before we walked into the cramped auditorium. I sat wordlessly down in our normal spot – right side, 13 rows from the front. I fiddled with my tie and prayed no one would come over. “Do you have to wear a tie?” Mom sighed as she saw me walk out of my room earlier that morning. “Why do you feel the need to look so strange?” I liked wearing ties because it made me feel like a man. I wanted to be a man. If I were a man I wouldn’t need to worry about being ladylike, or coming off as a snob. Mom leaned over to where I was sitting in the pew and whispered in my ear. “You can’t expect people to reach out to you if you won’t reach out to them.” I didn’t want people to reach out to me. I didn’t have anything to say to them.
Olivia walked into church and I gave her a tiny wave. People thought Olivia was a snob too, but her nose just naturally stuck up in the air – she couldn’t help it. We gravitated towards each other – gangling Olivia and I, because outcasts always seem to do that. Outcasts. Why were we outcasts? Not for any of the normal catty reasons teenagers are shunned and excluded from social circles, like speech impediments or funny clothes. Olivia and I didn’t fit into the Christian Young Adult mold; a carefully crafted list of ideals that every teenager who loves our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ should follow. We didn’t like to talk and we dropped the ball at volleyball games. I watched the Fellowship Baptist Mean Girls assemble at the front of the auditorium like nightmare superheroes and wondered if something was wrong with me. *** Antisocial. Shy. Insecure. Awkward. Adjectives used to describe people like me. Was I any or all of those things? Was it something different altogether? “Summer doesn’t talk much because she’s always thinking,” Mr. Edwards would always say when he’d introduce me to strangers. That wasn’t right either. I’m just as vapid as the next person and my lack of speech has nothing to do with the volume or quality of my thoughts. I was 17 years old before I became aware of the terms “introvert” and “extrovert” and what exactly they meant. I had just assumed that some people were slightly weird and others weren’t. The world I lived in had told this to me. In this new age of medical wonder and mystery, we try to categorize and file away every aspect of human tendency and personality in stainless steel filing cabinets and computer hard drives. We critically analyze and pick apart the human psyche and neatly type it out for all to read and learn about. Carl Jung, a Swiss psychotherapist, first categorized and identified these two personality types in 1921 when he wrote his study on psychological function, Psychological Types. Jung stated how there were two different attitudes towards life – only two differing modes of reaction to life’s varied and incalculable circumstances. An extroverted attitude usually meant an abundance of personal energy and intense interest in events, people and things. Sociable and confident, the extrovert flocks and thrives at parties and organizations. Weaknesses of being an extrovert were things such as being overly dependent on other people and what they think of you, adhering too strictly to modern conventions, and lacking self-criticism. The introverted way of thinking, according to Jung, entailed more concentration on inward energy, a rich imagination, and deeper reflection. The introvert usually lacks confidence in relation to people and does tend to be unsociable and shy. Jung also mentioned how harshly extroverts and introvert judge each other, always choosing to notice the negatives. Always choosing to notice the negatives........ To read the rest, visit http://summerlocklear.wordpress.com/creative-writing/ |
I Became A HorseWhen I was a girl I became a horse. I learned how to run, free from the humanly cares that used to still my spirit. Slim but strong, sinewy but elegant. Four hooves had to surpass these two frail legs. The wind tasted different blowing through my nostrils and over my snapping, supple skin. I became a horse.
As a girl I could not run very far, my heaving lungs barely adequate enough to carry me past the edge of Knapp’s meadow. I would always stop right there at the very edge of the meadow to catch my breath and survey the land in front of me. I loved that shabby little field with its patches of weeds and crab grass. Knapp was a farmer who lived next door to us and was my very best friend. He didn’t talk to anybody else, but he liked me. Knapp and I were the same and I suspect he was once a horse too, before he became an old man. He used to tell me stories of the races he’d been to when he was younger and the horses he had known. I was enraptured by his radiant words, my owl eyes constantly roaming the wrinkles that laced themselves around and crisscrossed over the worn face. He told me of the glittering lights and how the racetrack looked early in the morning, before the crowds streamed in: misty and not quite a dream, but far from the harsh reality of daytime. But oh, the horses. Those glorious horses with their coats blazing like five million shattered diamonds glinting in the sunlight. Horses with their eager nostrils flared rose pink. “There’s something so intrinsically graceful about the fluid lines of a horse,” Knapp would always say. “We people have to borrow and cultivate our grace, and oftentimes there isn’t any at all for us to work with.” We’d be like this for ages; Knapp rocking away in his chair and me on the floor eagerly sapping up every goldthread tale he spun. After we were through talking for the day, Knapp would grasp his walking stick with gnarled, wooden fingers, lurch up out of his chair, and head to the back porch to smoke his pipe with its familiar grooves. That’s when I knew it was time to go home. The setting sun would bruise the far away horizon with burnt purpled tones that slowly dimmed and ebbed into the healing embrace of inky night. Sometimes on my journey back to the house I would suddenly stop and thrust my pale, eager face to view the sky. Fully aware of how dull my capabilities to feel really were, I ached for my senses to be heightened, for the ability to taste all the individual flavors of life. Mama told me that even before I was born she knew I’d be a girl. “If the heartbeat sounds like a train, it’ll be a boy, but if it sounds like a galloping horse, you know it’s a girl. You were a galloping horse, baby girl.” I loved to play with mama’s hair. She had such exquisite hair; long, auburn, and shiny. I would endlessly brush it out, braid, and re-braid it like the mane of a prized show mare while she softly sang to me in her clear soprano voice. “There was an old woman tossed up in a basket Seventeen times as high as the moon Where she was going I could not but ask it, For in her hand she carried a broom “Old woman, old woman, old woman” quoth I “Oh wither, oh wither, oh wither so high?” “To sweep the cobwebs from the sky, but I’ll be with you by and by.” To read the rest, visit http://summerlocklear.wordpress.com/creative-writing/ |