Before I ask you to read anything, here’s a video of me back in 2009 dancing in my bedroom to Katy Perry’s Hot N Cold. I posted it on Facebook, back when I was still in college. I had come up with the dance after weeks of obsessive listening to the song (which I still love), and the whim struck me one evening to just set up my laptop, perform the entire routine in one take, and put it out there for all my friends and potential employers to find. I didn’t even think to change out of my Ozzy Osbourne t-shirt. I’d always planned to put it on YouTube (and even said I had in the beginning of the recording), but the whim passed, and I stopped caring. I’ve only now elected to follow through on that point.
Many, many thoughts regarding me as a person might pass through one’s mind upon watching that video. “Effervescent” might be one kindly entry. “Gleeful” might be another. “Touched in the head” is a favorite I’ve gotten more than once. I doubt very much that “introverted” might come up. Yet it’s indisputably the truth.
Spend enough time on Tumblr or in certain Internet circles, and invariably you’ll stumble across one of the multitudinous memes and webcomic strips that advise people how to recognize and “care for” an introvert. I find it telling, however, that when I Google the word itself, the default reference result pinned to the top of the search results reads the following:
A term introduced by the psychologist Carl Jung to describe a person whose motives and actions are directed inward. Introverts tend to be preoccupied with their own thoughts and feelings and minimize their contact with other people. (dictionary.reference.com/browse/introvert)
While I thought it was cool to learn that Jung coined the term, those points on preoccupations and minimizing contact are troubling for me to hear. Introverts are simply people who gain energy from being alone. Likewise, extroverts are simply those who gain energy from being around others. But all of us are varied and individual in our expressions of introversion.
When I began graduate school, an observation (of which I was completely unaware) began circulating that, at all of the events for my program’s first semester, I could be found circling the room, sipping my drink, and speaking to virtually no one, like some extremely awkward shark. It was only after months of forcing my way through the torrents of my own shyness, engaging slowly with a handful of peers with whom I felt some glimmers of kinship, that I was able to “turn on,” for lack of a better term.
The process of getting to know me has been described as frightening by more than one new friend of mine. For days or weeks, I’ll hardly speak to new people. I loathe small-talk and find it excruciating to get through, and I’m far too self-conscious bringing up deeper topics for fear of coming off as too intense or strange. Then, after listening to a new acquaintance interact with enough other people that I feel I can comfortably make them laugh or engage some topic we have in common, I’ll summon just a little courage and break in with some kind of opener. Usually, I’ve made enough of a study to feel reasonably confident it’ll land (and I find it heart-breakingly tragic whenever it doesn’t).
If this new individual and I hit it off, I butterfly out into an entirely different person. My volume levels soar. I tell jokes and converse for hours at a time. I listen and ask questions, making intense eye contact. I even begin to hug hello and goodbye rather than say it.
I’m very bad at casual friendships. This small contingency of people I’ve let in and shown who I truly am, so much so that they often forget the shy, quiet kid they first encountered, tend to have my undying loyalty and continual effort to keep their company. And when in their company, my thoughts and feelings do not preoccupy me. Apart from taking the occasional night in with a book or a season of something marvelous on Netflix, I don’t minimize any contact with them.
None of this changes that I am an introvert. Every time that I have taken any version of the Myers-Briggs Personality Test, I’ve scored no less than 70% Introvert. I always prefer intimate gatherings to large parties, and when attending one of the latter, I invariably spend the entire evening in the company of the small group of friends and loved ones with whom I arrived. Phone calls, text messages, and emails generally fill me with a slight sense of unease, if not pure dread. When walking, taking the train, shopping, or generally just inhabiting public spaces alone, I wear headphones and listen to music, audiobooks, or podcasts to project an unambiguous message of “Please do not speak with me unless there is some type of emergency.”
All of these define my introversion, but so does my propensity for performing. For much of my life, I’ve studied and worked as a theatrical actor. I’ve been a performance poet on and off for years. I make my current living as a teacher who is as well known for the boom of my lecture voice as well as my tendency to break out my acoustic guitar and perform horrible renditions of Fall Out Boy and Rihanna songs during down time. (My students love me, by the way.) At the last wedding I attended, I danced so hard that I ripped my pants during a spirited interpretation of Lil Jon & the Eastside Boyz’s “Get Low.”
I realized long ago that this performing is possible because it asks so very little of me in terms of true give-and-take human interaction. Ask me to move and recite in front of a crowd of strangers, and I am all power and energy. Ask me to hold conversations with just one or two of those same strangers, and I am nervous tics and low-eyed mumbling. When I perform, I am not showing my inner self, the guarded being who is so intent to make and keep these close friendships. I’m simply a happy, gleeful person who enjoys these actions, loves the audience reaction, and is happy afterward to sit back down with my loved ones and never say a word to another soul in the building.
I’m the introvert who decided to record a moderately ridiculous dance video and throw it online. What’s more, I’ve even decided to include it here, at the top of an article for a website that garners thousands of readers for its content. I didn’t do this because I expected praise for my dancing skills (they’re solid at best, but I have fun) or because I miss my long hair (I totally do, though). I did it because I love to make people smile and laugh. I love joking and dancing and singing, despite not being amazing at any of them. And I did it because the current expectations of introverts are flawed and narrow.
We are not caricatures of agoraphobics. We are not crazy cat-ladies or hermits. The people in my life can testify: some of us can be intensely fun to be around once you get to know us.
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Video Transcript
Alex:
It’s on YouTube as well, ladies gentlemen. This is Alex’s “Hot N Cold” dance.
Music:
You change your mind
Like a girl changes clothes.
Yeah, you, PMS
Like a bitch
I would know
And you over think
Always speak
Cryptically
I should know
That you’re no good for me
[Chorus:]
‘Cause you’re hot then you’re cold
You’re yes then you’re no
You’re in then you’re out
You’re up then you’re down
You’re wrong when it’s right
It’s black and it’s white
We fight, we break up
We kiss, we make up
(You) You don’t really wanna stay, no
(You) But you don’t really wanna go-o
You’re hot then you’re cold
You’re yes then you’re no
You’re in then you’re out
You’re up then you’re down
We used to be
Just like twins
So in sync
The same energy
Now’s a dead battery
Used to laugh ’bout nothing
Now you’re plain boring
I should know that
You’re not gonna change
[Chorus]
Someone call the doctor
Got a case of a love bipolar
Stuck on a roller coaster
And I can’t get off this ride
You change your mind
Like a girl changes clothes
‘Cause you’re hot then you’re cold
You’re yes then you’re no
You’re in then you’re out
You’re up then you’re down
You’re wrong when it’s right
It’s black and it’s white
We fight, we break up
We kiss, we make up
You’re hot then you’re cold
You’re yes then you’re no
You’re in then you’re out
You’re up then you’re down
You’re wrong when it’s right
It’s black and it’s white
We fight, we break up
We kiss, we make up
(You) You don’t really wanna stay, no
(You) But you don’t really wanna go-o
You’re hot then you’re cold
You’re yes then you’re no
You’re in then you’re out
You’re up then you’re down, down…
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