I currently am living too brain dead and exhausted to do much of anything these days. My compassion and patience and words for the day are pretty much done by 3 pm each week day. I just want to hide in a hole in my room and not come out.

I don’t want to be around a single person ever. 

I spent a majority of my Saturday, in my room, with the door shut. I didn’t attempt to make conversation with people. I said no to plans. I didn’t even check the mail.
And I didn’t feel better.

I woke up this morning before my alarm and my roommate was up, so we decided to go sit at a coffee shop before we went to church.

We didn’t talk about anything earth shaking. Just sat in each other’s space for longer then 15 minutes and doodle and occasionally spoke about random things. And it made everything feel lighter and brighter.

When I took the Meyers Briggs before I went on the world race 4 years ago I tested as an ENFJ. An extrovert.

I laughed. I prefaced every conversation about my Meyers Briggs with “I have literally never tested as an extrovert. Ever.”

I thought this was the most comical thing that I had ever heard. There is no way that I was an extrovert. I was your poster child for introverts.

But, I’ve come to learn that maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t that I was introvert. It was that I taught myself not need/depend on/want people in my life. I had spoken myself into introversion. 

Somewhere along the line I had deemed myself a person who got their energy from being alone.

But, in reality, I had just decided that if I needed energy from being around people and none were around or wanted to be around me then I had the ability to get hurt.

I had gotten kind of sick of getting hurt.

Now, I don’t believe that you need a test to tell you who you are, but I do believe that words have power. And when this test told me, that I was an extrovert, I started to see ways that I was.

I love being around small groups of humans, I love coffee dates with friends, or running errands with someone. I like just being around people. My Saturday day of introversion usually includes wandering around downtown and seeing all the regular folks. I’m alone, but I’m not alone.

I do enjoy my alone time, I like cleaning in an empty house, or sitting at a coffee shop by myself to write. 

But I do better at the end of a long day, if I grab a beer with Elizabeth or meet Jonathan at Bob’s or Alyssa at woods. Friday’s feel better when we get drinks and food and toast to a week finished together. Sundays feel more full when Jeremiah, Patty and I go out for brunch or Joanna and I eat truffle fries and Patrick pops out on his break to steal some. 

The yellow house feels like it’s living up to it’s potential when even after a horrendously long day we cram 12 people into our front room for chimichangas and cards against humanity. 

And even though I joke that I want to stay at a hotel when I go to Orange County, I go there to go home–and that’s Tyler and Priscilla’s (and obviously with Krystle spending the night.)

If I truly believed I didn’t need people, I wouldn’t have made 3/4 of the decisions I’ve made in my life.

Something in me knew.

I think I spent a lot of my life, hiding from getting hurt, hiding from people.

Hiding from myself. 

I used being an introvert as an excuse to not be around people to not see myself.

If you are a person who is fact an introvert or a small group extrovert (this is my category) please remember, that you do in fact need people. 

We aren’t meant to do this alone. 

This is what I need to remember these days. 

I’m not meant to do this alone.

And I’m not.

Lesson one was you were meant to take up space.

And lesson two is this:

Trust me, you aren’t alone.  

Your people are out there.

And they need you as much as you need them.