Ode to Introverts

Tonight I had one of those moments when I ask myself "How the hell did you get here?". I am sitting in the back of a girl named Vicky's car, a million stuffed animals suction cupped onto the windows next to me. She cuts off two buses and is almost rear-ended by another.

"I hate buses!". The horns are blaring and I'm clutching my seat.

"Why are you so quiet, Jenny?" Why is she calling me Jenny?

"Uh, I don't know. I guess I'm more of an obser-"

"Oh, you bloody bus. I hate buses! They should be banned!"

At this point I am fed up with the scary British chick who is about to be the cause of my demise but even more fed up with myself for agreeing to come to Newcastle with Shraddha and a group of her classmates. I am not gregarious or outgoing and I've been told rather unapproachable. But one role I do fill is that of the dispassionate observer. Or if not dispassionate then at least an observer. But nobody ever lets me fade into the wallpaper. They always have to call me out on not talking. WTF?! I would never turn the question around on them and rudely ask "Why are you so loud? Pathological need for attention? Insecurity? Daddy issues?" Heck no! I am not so uncouth. It seems the world is unready to accept or understand introverts. If someone is quiet the automatic assumption is that there must be a problem. But if I am among strangers, and even among friends at times, I am usually quite content to watch the way people communicate, the way they fiddle with their jewelry or rush their words. People watching is not just a hobby but a serious academic pursuit. How can I learn to write fictional people if I do not observe the actions and interactions of non-fictional people? For a writer, living, breathing and being constantly conscious of it all is half of the job. I do not feel as if I live less because of my frequent silence. Many times I feel like I'm living more than others. I can take the simplest experience and assign meaning and depth to it that others wouldn't. There is beauty in coffee stains and gap teeth, in wet cement and old bicycles. And I am lucky enough to see that beauty. Even if I'm not loud enough to let anyone else know about it.

Worry Wart

I’ve gotten into the terrible habit of surfing the web until the wee hours of the morning at which point I become too exhausted to focus on a screen/book/bullshit so I succumb to sleep. I’ve worried almost constantly since I got here. Not that this is a new pastime for me but I’ve gotten rather obsessive. I am terrified of forgetting. The longer I live here the more it seems entirely possible to me that I could forget everything that made me happy back home. I am reticent to let myself become fully immersed in English culture (I’m definitely not going to replace ‘bathroom’ with ‘toilets’ any time soon. There are reasons for abstraction). What if I forget about Netflix and my held queue is deleted? What if I forget that I can sew? What if I forget my favorite park in San Diego where we like to go for picnics? Every time I try to explain this to people at home I get a verbal eye roll and a “what the hell are you talking about?”. But I can’t shake it. For Christmas my father gave me a small notebook as a stocking stuffer. I’ve been writing lists in it since I got here and the titles of these lists are getting more and more ridiculous. Before I left home I wrote “Things to Do in 2009” which looks fairly normal. Then there are lists for the cathedrals I want to see, the cities I want to visit…all pretty innocuous. But then there’s “Things to Do When I Get Back” and “Hobbies/Interests to Explore” and of course, “Things I Really Don’t Want to Forget”. Quite frankly, I am disturbing myself. I must subconsciously expect to be hit by a bus and sustain massive brain damage if I am making lists for nearly everything. Oh yes, there’s also “How to be More Ecological When I Get Home”. Maybe it’s a form of OCD. Oh god. That sounds entirely likely.

I hate this limbo. All I really want is some reassurance that when I get back my whole life will not have been turned upside down. It unnerves me that I basically just stuffed my shit into Chip’s attic and my backseat and left for another country. I didn’t even stop to think that I have to find somewhere to live when I get back not to mention find a job and unpack my stuff (for the 5th time in 3 years). I hate that I feel as if it is stuff that ties me to a place, that without that anchor I cannot seem to grow roots anywhere. But how deep can roots grow anyway in a matter of four months? I do not move on the breeze. I never have. Sometimes I fantasize that I am the wild woman who runs free and never stops to set up camp. But that only lasts so long and then I’m miserable because I gave up that tiny piece of home I had managed to create. I do not regret this. I needed to do it and I’m happy. I just hope there aren’t too many pieces to pick up when I get back.

Open-ended

Last night was Liz’s birthday and a big group of international students went bowling to celebrate. It seems as if I’ve been around other people almost constantly but I’ve been lonely all along. I sat on the long bench at the bowling alley, next to Isla. I was wearing this white sweater with eyelets in it, and when she sat down next to me, her hair touched me through the sweater and my body lit up all of a sudden. It’s almost as if it was reminded that once upon a time I used to touch and be touched. But for the past month I’ve been surviving on the dregs of involuntary human contact; a brush in the stairwell, a bump on the metro. I think of three more months without kissing, making love or even having my hair played with and they seem to stretch out infinitely before me, bleak and cold.

Today I saw a student production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. The actors looked so young, trying to look so old. I love the hyperbolic drama. I am twenty years old and somehow these kids that may only be a year or two, or maybe only a few months younger than me, looked like tender green peas. They smoked cigarettes, which I’m sure were herbal or, and exhaled huge exaggerated plumes of smoke. I’d watch them peter out into the air, a few of the thicker wisps would linger and whip themselves up, and fall lazily, avoiding their inevitable taper. For some reason it reminded me of the snow that hit Sunderland the day after I arrived. I would stand outside, trying to rationalize its behavior. But it wasn’t rational at all. The snow was not falling but flying in every direction: up, down, sideways. I’m sure I annoyed the hell out of everyone with how many times I exclaimed in wonder.

Half an hour or so into the play, I started to feel the effects of the diet pill and latte I downed before the show started. I know, I know. What the hell am I doing taking diet pills? Why am I also consuming large quantities of the faux sugary substance named aspartame? Yes, this is the same person who refuses to take birth control pills because she believes such hormones are unnatural. Yes, this is also the same person who buys non-hydrogenated peanut butter and only drinks organic milk. It is possible I have a subconscious cancerous death wish but I’m more inclined to believe that it’s all a matter of vanity. I should feel guilty but it hasn’t caught up with me yet. So anyway, I started getting that caffeine buzz feeling but it kept flapping around my body as if it had tiny wings and it would get caught in the strangest places like the glands in my neck or the undersides of my arms. I couldn’t stop fidgeting, rubbing my eyes and massaging my temples. My worst paranoid delusions center around me dying from a brain aneurism so I tend to worry when my pulse starts doing crazy things. But then it dislodged itself from wherever it was stuck and decided to make peace with my body. My scalp began to tingle and I felt just like I do right before a tab of Ecstasy really takes hold of me. This is the point at which I decide I am a philosopher and everything around me must be moralized. So I’m watching the scene in the play where Martha and Nick are having a raunchy dance together. It’s an old fashioned dance but they’re doing it with the same vigor that I’m sure they would if they were grinding on each other at some club today. And then the act of dancing makes complete sense to me. Dancing is an acceptable expression of the need, the desire to fuck. When else do we allow our bodies to go into total abandon and move only in the ways that feel best to us? While I rarely do anything without casting a critical eye on myself I am somehow able to dance as if no one is watching just about every time. Last Saturday at Independent when I heard a song I knew I’d throw my head back and move my hips and sing at the top of my lungs. Only the best kind of exhaustion comes after a night of dancing.