As you may have guessed, I’m an introvert. Don’t hide your astonishment folks! Not all introverts are the same though. No, no boxes for us. We all are our own person and come in various shapes, sounds and colors. We’re mysterious like that. It’s like that colossal box of crayons your teacher had in the cubby at elementary school. You’d dig your hand into it and think you grabbed the forest green buried by the mountain of colors, only to discover you grabbed the puke sage instead. I’d usually toss it back into the box and try again. Puke sage just won’t cut it for my beautiful rainforest. Some people are easier to read than others. They initially look “puke green”, but you realize after you rub away a layer, it’s merely a residue of fragments from the other colors. Once that top layer is rubbed away, that beautiful rainforest green shimmers through.
It’s actually pretty remarkable that some people are able to just put it out there, “THIS IS ME”, then others, they have this weird haze covering them that make things less clear. You observe them and wonder, “Are they just nervous? Maybe lacking confidence? Do they not like me? Are they just a jerk? Oh no, but they just smiled…I think. Maybe she was laughing at my bad haircut?” Either way, some people are easy to figure out, while others make it hard for you to have a real understanding of who they are, initially. In my wee lass days, I wandered around with a lisp and a bowl cut. I was taller than most girls. I blushed often and mumbled every time I spoke to people I didn’t call mom, dad or big sis. I had to take a speech therapy class in elementary school. Side note: the speech therapist would come to the class room and publicly announce her presence to the teacher oh, AND the CLASS. Me being, well, me, was petrified and humiliated each week. Swiftly rushing to the door to escape the judging, young eyes of my classmates.
Back to my other childhood woes….I also stumbled and tripped often, and walked into hard objects and people. Obviously, I was quite bruised. I sound so exquisite, don’t I? This didn’t last forever, thankfully. The bowl cut is no more! Everything else though, well, I can’t say I’ve blossomed past that phase. Now in my mid-thirties, I still mumble often, can’t speak very loud…and I still blush at work when I’m speaking in front of more than one set of eyes. And yep, I still walk into things and trip over my left foot. Only my left-my right has my back. I try to not beat myself up for my awkward public blunders, alas, it happens. I’ve learned I need to at least make a stout attempt at letting my screw ups go.
Some quiet folks (not all) keep this haze up, because we have always felt quite aware of our clumsy and awkward tendency. We prefer to stay in the backdrop with OZ, hiding behind the curtain and armed with a microphone. In most cases, if we’re at work, we are probably uber focused on our project, or just shielding you because we’re in a crummy mood and don’t want to distend that energy out to anyone else. But usually, we just want to feel out your vibe. We’re like a timid deer, hoping you don’t have a gun. Can I trust you with my graceless disposition? We need time to feel things out. We’re pretty good at sensing energy. Feel free to express it. Once we feel certain you will only relish in the complex burrows of our nature, the haze comes down. Rainforest green glaring out for all to see.