Explaining me (or at least starting to).

Forgive me.  This will be a text-heavy post.

As you know, I am reading this book called Quiet, about introverts, and it's finally getting to the heart of the matter, at least as I see it, because it's finally talking about the traits of introverts and the value of introverts, but in the larger world and not simply in the confines of the workplace or business.  I'm now learning about introverts in their social realm, and as children, and I see myself in these descriptions.  It's almost like a mirror image.  So yes, it seems to me that I fall far on the introverted end of the spectrum.  And what I am really enjoying about this book is that it's allowing me, for perhaps the first time, the opportunity to think that this is okay.

Really, for probably my whole life I have thought that I am deficient, defective, needing to change.  I am too quiet, too shy, too scared and fearful of people and the world.  I have felt like the proverbial fish out of water, a dull-colored freshwater fish trying to swim in the saltwater oasis of brightly-colored tropical varieties.  As a teenager I was told told that I was depressed and started my experiment with antidepressants and social workers.  This continues, though the drugs are not pharmaceuticals and are instead new-age-y homeopathic remedies.  What I have learned over these years is that I am not depressed, not clinically so, but am instead quirky, introverted, and socially anxious.  I've also been blessed with a quick temper, though I believe that less and less and more and more believe that I have a lot of energy that is simply not being productively and meaningfully appropriated, so by the end of the day I am tired and frustrated and the energy is expelled in entirely the wrong way.

In fact, my energy is being spent trying to be something I am not, and trying to survive in an environment that is not best suited for me.  Because who I am, this me that I am, is not deficient, defective, or needing to change.  I am just fine the way I am, but I have spent my whole life trying not to be me, or feeling like I should be different.  Better.  Someone other.

I have always been told, whether directly or indirectly, that I needed to be more vocal.  More social.  More aggressive.  Speak up more, Rosanne!  Rosanne needs to participate more in class discussions.  Rosanne, you could never be a professor; as a professor you would have to speak in front of people and you can't seem to do that.  When grades in school were partially based on class participation, I knew that I would score low in those areas.  That type of grading was not incentive for me to push myself; it was incentive for me to retreat further into myself.  But look at that language!  "Retreat further into myself."  As if I am an army in defeat.  But this is how one like me feels in these situations.  Defeated. Like I should surrender.  Surrender for simply having a different style and a different comfort zone.

Where am I going with this?  Wow, I could go so many places.  I could write a lengthy memoir entitled Confessions of a Real-Life Introvert.  Maybe I will.  If one-third of the population is introverted, then maybe my memoir would sell.  But that's slightly off-track.  Where am I going with this?  At this point in my life, as an adult, I can pretty much construct my life in any way that I want.  I can choose to do what makes me comfortable.  If I like to do x then I can do x, and chances are that there are other people who like to do x and with whom I can connect over x.  If I thrive in a particular kind of environment and a particular kind of work or cause is meaningful to me, I can make that my professional passion.  However, I haven't done this.   I have not, as an adult with free will and choices, constructed my life in this way.  I am still, in so many ways, trying to be someone I am not and trying to fit my square self into a round hole.  And this bothers me, unsettles me, makes me absolutely insane each and every day.  I think about this obsessively every single day.

You'd think that as a librarian I'd be in introvert heaven.  Surprisingly, this is not the case.  Professionally I have not been in a niche that really allows me to thrive, that allows my real self to shine.  I play at being someone else. I really liked the research that I did at my first professional job.  I loved the fast-paced nature of it, the fact that I could sit at my computer and puzzle through these questions, find the answers, fill my head with so much information and data in the process, and then write it all up and send it off, only to start on the next request.  Once you introduced the element of being in charge of my fellow researchers, once you removed me from the research itself, I became much less enamored with the job.  I always knew that the environment as a whole was not for me, did not fit who I was or my personality, and that each day I was pretending to be something and to believe in a particular kind of life that wasn't really me, but the work itself allowed me to get through and past that.  Once that work stopped I really couldn't be there anymore.  (I remember one night sitting in my bedroom crumpled on the floor, with elbows on my knees, face in my hands, back against the wall, staring into space with tears streaming down my face because I simply did not know who I was anymore and did not know how I was going to continue being that person.  That was a low point, one I hope to never repeat.)  It was quite literally psychologically killing me. I eventually left, taking this new role in an academic library, and even though this role is different and certainly more in-line with who I really am, it's not the best fit.  The fit could be a lot better.  I still go to work each day and do a lot of pretending; I still come home each night completely drained of any positive energy because my energy has all been spent trying to be engaged and interested, trying to get through ten hours of non-stop people interaction.  I have no "restorative niche" in my day.  My door is always open, people are always talking to me, always asking me about things, always expecting me to be on and to have the answer.  I put so much pressure on myself to connect with people - talk with the students, counsel my staff, set up meetings, agree to things and projects that I don't want to do and don't have an interest in - and this is just hard for me.  Very hard.  Very draining.

So I'm determined now to find something that will allow me to have these "restorative niches," or will simply be the appropriate environment for me so that I won't have to act quite as much, so that I will have energy left at the end of the day.  I am determined now to change my thinking, to think no more that it's me that I have to change but instead think that I have to change my environment, my path, so that my real self can thrive.  And maybe I can pursue reference or cataloging if that's where I think I'm best suited. I never seriously considered cataloging despite the fact that this was my favorite class in library school because I always thought that I had to push myself to get outside of the backroom, to get into the public side of librarianship, because catalogers were all weird, strange,and entirely antisocial (and I had been told all of my life to be more social, and I had been told throughout library school that the "modern" and young librarian needed to be an outspoken advocate for library services).  Because of this, how could I with good conscience pursue cataloging?  But what if catalogers simply like what they do and are good at it? And what if they are the backbone of a good research library, because without the quality of their data the library is pretty much garbage?  That sounds pretty great to me, and far less judgmental.  That's the kind of thinking that I need to have, that more accepting thinking.  It's that direction that I have to move in, and reading and embodying the points from Quiet is a first and important step.

But before I leave you, one photo as a reward for reading all of that text:

My "real" self would love to make these crocheted washcloths.  My "real" self would love to learn to crochet.  One day.  I'll get there.  In the meantime, my "real" self will simply drool over the photos.