Introvert

 I've been thinking a lot about the various aspects of my personality and wondering which of them are truly mine and which ones were created by the treatment I received as a child. When I go down the list, I wonder if any of these traits actually belong to my true self. Sometimes, it makes me wonder how much I really want to complete this course of discovery of self. Will I even like who I find when I help my true self flourish and grow within me? It's scary. 

While I want to be free of the pain that my parents forced on me, not knowing who I am deep down makes me feel like I could be on the verge of losing the only self I've ever known. Will I be lonelier without him? Will I be happier? Maybe more grounded but without many of my creative abilities? 

Does it even matter? I've shown myself that I can't continue with things as-is. I've tried desperately to pursue relief for my TMS pain, only to have it return again and again. In some ways, this feels like my last chance. So, why do I feel reluctant to commit to this course of action?

I think it's all about the devil you know. They say that women who are abused often stay in the relationships because it's predictable. Maybe I've been in an abusive relationship with my parents for so long that I no longer know how to leave it behind. It's an important distinction - leaving IT, not leaving THEM. I've already left the people behind - my mom in 1991 when she died of ALS and my father just a couple of years ago when I permanently cut ties with him. Sadly, I still have their shit between my ears and in my heart, weighing me down, even if they're no longer a part of my life. That's the part of me that constantly works to keep me down - the internalized parents whose programming made me search for answers to my pain.

So what qualities would I assign to the person I am now? Well, today I'm starting to explore some of the traits that I think are mine.

INTROVERT

I knew the terms introvert and extravert, but it wasn't until late in my adult life that I began to see how they might apply to me. Up until 2007, I had spent most of my time looking for solutions outside of myself in a partner. I'd clung to various women and girls my whole life in an attempt to find an anchor. When I married, I really felt like I'd found it. She (I'll call her M) was lots of things I wasn't and I used her to fill in the gaps within myself until she disappeared leaving me hollowed out and completely bereft of anything. I'd never counted on anyone or anything that way before or since. I never committed myself so fully to an idea as I did to the idea of being married to her. It became my identity.

Looking back on it, I realize that it happened just a short time after the death of my mother. That was a strange experience for me. I remember feeling sad and all, but not mournful. I don't know how I felt, really. I think I made it more about me than anything. I'd spent a lot of time visiting her and trying to help her understand that she could heal if she wanted to, but also knowing that she was choosing to die and she was blaming me. I know she couldn't face living with my father without me and my brother around. Her death was her final passive-aggressive act against us.

The year I finished grad school, I spent the summer house sitting for one of my professors. That was when I began dating M. It was a summer of being disconnected. No more school. No more family (my mother was dead and my father was as big as asshole as ever). I was losing a lot of my friends - my place to live (I lived alone in married student housing on campus because it was cheap) - my job - everything that makes a modern man who he is. Going out with M to late night dance clubs and jumping around until we were sweaty then going back to the closet she rented in an old 1920s-era apartment building and enjoying one another without really talking that much made the summer bearable. I crafted the illusion of connection between us when I don't really think any ever existed.

You see, M's father was a preacher and an alcoholic. After she ran away from me unexpectedly, a mutual friend referred me to books on ACOAs - adult children of alcoholics. I recognized her in those pages alongside some of me and the hollowed out me ached to fix things and help us both to heal. That wasn't ever to be. I suppose I should be happy about that, even though a pit in my stomach still longs for the us that existed when we were happy then.

Anyway, it wasn't my intention to get into all of that, but it's part of the explanation of how I put relationships above everything else in my life. I always thought that if I could have a successful relationship, I could be happy. But that wasn't true and I didn't really even know how to define "success". I was miserable in our marriage because I made so many sacrifices to take care of her. I worked a job I disliked and lived in a place I disliked and was becoming a person I disliked, all in the name of trying to live up to some random idea of what it was to be a man. M never made enough money to carry her weight, flitting around from 1099 job to 1099 job without a care. I envied her and felt trapped by the situation, but unlike her, I was willing to stick things out.

I moved away from that city five years after the divorce, and immediately began making the same mistakes in another city with another emotionally inaccessible woman. We lived together for seven years before she decided to hit the road. This time it didn't hurt so much. It was inconvenient and I tried to hold onto her for the sake of having someone in my life, but I didn't really want to deep down.

Finally after many years and many so-called relationships, I started spending more time trying to understand who I was. and why I was the way I was. I did some Myers-Briggs personality tests that claimed I was INTJ - Introverted, Intuitive, Thinking, and Judging. After digging into it, the whole introversion thing was very informative. It seemed to be a bigger part of me than I'd expected.

I ended up on a subreddit dedicated to introverts and what I read was alternately comforting and disturbing. The fact that others felt like me in some ways was comforting, but the fact that many of those others were whiny and seemed to expect the world to cater to them was upsetting. I didn't think I was like that - I liked being self-sufficient and I frequently inconvenienced myself for others. Maybe that was the bothersome part. Maybe, deep down, I wanted to demand better treatment but i had been taught that I wasn't worth it. That inner conflict was pitting me against myself in many ways, some of which I wasn't even aware of.

But introversion in and of itself, I would never change. I like not depending on other people for my energy. I like not feeling lonely when I'm alone. I do crave community, but in many ways, my idea of 'community" is a dream. I only had a glimpse at something like it once in my life, and I may even be fooling myself into thinking so now. The more I think about all of these things, the less I trust my own memories of them.

At any rate, I like introverts much better than extraverts. I feel sorry for those who require someone around 24/7 to be a mirror so they can feel like themselves. I never want to depend on anyone so completely. I used to wonder why anyone would ever go to a bar and pay the same amount for a bottle of beer that you would pay for a six pack at the 7-11. The answer is extraverts. 

I never want to be an extravert, but I can definitely pretend to get the job done from time to time. I think a part of my disconnect with people has been that pretending. I've always been good at being what people expected of me at any given time, regardless of whether or not that was what I wanted to be. That's been such a big part of me that I'm not sure where it ends and the real me begins sometimes. That's definitely something I'm going to work on - being genuine and in the moment as opposed to being what people expect. It will be difficult, but I'm working on it.