I wonder if everyone’s internal life is as vocal or non stop like mine. The internal voice of your consciousness. I suppose it’s this way for most introverts who need and enjoy introspective time to unwind. It’s why I write. You can be satisfy both aspects of you. The part that needs to go within and process your thoughts, and the part that enjoys an audience and needs to be seen. Well perhaps a tad narcissistic as well.
I know people who are extroverts and need friends around them constantly or they feel lost. I’m not that type of extrovert anymore. Maybe I’ve been jaded after being too trusting with some toxic people thinking they were friends, but turned out to be self serving mere acquaintances.
One thing I cannot abide by is lack of ethics, and worst of all is lying, so I have severed ties due to that. I can still never understand how someone can truly be a sociopath, ok with sadistically bullying others with less power than themselves or even cheating on their partners with zero remorse. Yes I wish I wasn’t, but I’m still bitter. I wish I could be more forgiving, but unfortunately I’m a Scorpio although I present like a golden retriever.
Also life happened and circumstances changed (didn’t want to trouble my real friends who were busy with their growing kids, now teenagers), but I used to be more like that in my twenties.
Now I’m adapted to be more comfortable alone or with very few close ones, my relatives and my partner. I’ve realised how short life is and I want to spend it with those who truly matter to me. The loss of my father made that crystal clear and cancer made me value the closest loved ones even more.
I am a low maintenance friend and still do keep in touch with my old true friends from school and my first job (who supported me when we were younger and when I had cancer) So low maintenance that we don’t see each other physically for more than two years, but yet the conversation flows non stop once we’re together. But I’m lucky, as I have my cousins and very young aunties and they are my friends too. In fact the best built in friends who have known me the longest and actually care.
After the pandemic this feeling of enjoying the company of a few instead of many has intensified. I developed social anxiety with unfamiliar people in the past decade or so. Once the social anxiety was so tense I actually threw up after the gathering. Been avoiding them since.
As we got used to our own company during lockdown I’m sure it’s been hard to get used to large groups again. The real reason? I don’t feel confident with new people who ask questions. I’d rather be with those who know me well and are sensitive enough that they always spare me the interrogation about my life choices and not fitting into the norm.
Alone with my partner just feels so easy. We don’t even have to articulate much, as it is known to us. There’s that comfort and ease that I used to have with my friends as a kid (twenty something is basically a kid). Your partner kinda becomes your best friend. It’s hard to imagine that we’ve known each other for 25 years. That’s more than half my life.
Time passes in dizzying speeds and I want it to slow down. It’s also heartbreaking to think that my Papa knew me for 31 years 9 months (the last 2 weeks I can’t count as we were separated by an ocean) and it didn’t feel enough. I was so immature then. Feels like just a drop of water in the ocean and I yearn for more. But I am grateful that he conveyed to me an ocean of love in that time. I’m writing about it to solidify it and feel it all again.
