Song Of The Introvert

Maybe you have felt this way?

Mama is calling but I don’t hear. Lost in a book. Words filling ears, head, belly, can’t hear nothing. Barely there, except a body, a book, little hands turning pages.

She flings open the closet, says what are you doing? I wince at the light, turn off my little flashlight, look up. My face says can’t you see the book in my hands but my mouth has better manners. Says I was just reading, mama.

Supper’s ready she says, we’re waiting on you. I’m sorry mama, I say. Jump up, drop the flashlight on the closet floor, put the book on my bed, run quick wash up my hands. Sit at the table, say I’m sorry I made everybody wait, I was reading.

What were you reading, daddy asks and I start to say about the girl in the forest and the bird but someone says pass the potatoes please and someone tells about school, and someone kicks someone under the table and mama says for heaven’s sakes cut it out you kids and someone complains about beans, asks if there’s dessert and I just. Can’t. With all the voices. All at once.

My words trail away, fall on the floor with the scraps the dog scuffles for and quietly I eat potatoes, beans, chicken, round and round. Say thank you for supper mama. Yes mama, I remember it’s my turn to dry dishes.

One day I hold baby brother on my lap. He is two and I am ten. Kissing his little head while he watches Sesame Street, singing along in sweet little baby voice.

One of these things is not like the others.

And I know. Deep down inside I know. I am that thing. One of these things. Not like the others. Sometimes the knowing makes the whole world roar. Like holding my breath under the water in the bathtub and the world goes quiet, all that’s left is the sound of my breathing, breathing, roaring my ears.

I squeeze him tight. To keep me here. So I don’t blow away to the land of Oz.

---

Every time, it’s the same. Hand mama my report card, hang my head. Cry before she even has words. Full of A’s. Should be proud, but the words at the bottom eat up the happy. Needs to speak up more. Needs to talk more. Doesn’t speak up enough. Daydreaming too much. Needs to contribute more to class discussion.

Mama reads the words, looks at me with worried eyes. Shakes her head and says real soft, what’s wrong with you child. Why you always so quiet? What did I do wrong with you? Paints me in guilt. For being me. One of these things is not like the others.

I am not made for twenty voices talking all at once. I am made for climbing trees with sticks in my hair, walking in the river talking to tiny fishies swimming round my legs. Made for libraries and books, painting and writing and making things with my hands.

I am an introvert before I know what that means. People think it means all sorts of wrong-headed things. Not liking people, or being shy, or not having people skills. None of which spell who I am. It’s not about that. It’s just—where we drink.

Extroverts drink from the world, from crowds, from people. Fills them up. Makes them whole. Introverts go inside to drink. Fill ourselves up. Give it to the world. Exhausted, crawl away to be alone a while. To go inside. To fill up again. And again.

I run to the river, to the forest. Talk to the birds, tell secrets to the trees. Drink nature and I am a bear laying to hibernate, belly full and sated.

---

Twenty coats piled up on mama’s bed. Door flung for fresh air, nevermind it’s minus forty out there. Where is everyone? mama says and Dad laughs. Says it’s early, Mama. They had to work. Don’t worry, they’ll come. They do. More come.

Voices wash over me. Storm blowing in from the north, but it’s supposed to clear up and get nice, supposed to be a nice spring and did you hear in the news, about that politician and someone says what somebody at work said and what the neighbor said and they laugh. So loud and I stand there, slowly and silently emptying out. Words jumble together, go crashing over me. A tsunami swallowing the shores. Of me.

Little brother tugs my shirt. Says where did you go? I smile, say I’m right here baby. Scoop him up, ask want a story? He throws little arms around my neck. Kisses my cheek. Says yes and says I love you. How much I ask and little arms fling wide. This much. Big as the ocean, big as the sky and I laugh. Carry him to his room, sit on the bed with a picture book. This one? I say and he nods happy.

I read him about Flat Stanley. Silly little book that will get famous when there is the internet one day, but it’s not here yet. Six thousand classrooms of third graders will color flat Stanley, cut him out like a paper doll, send him in the mail to go visit the world. Make him famous.

Cut out my picture, I think. Paste it on a popsicle stick. Move me around smiling. Flat me at the family get-together. Flat me goes to school. But maybe leave white borders around the paper doll of me. So it never quite fits in. So it never blends in. There but not part of. One of these things is not like the others.

---

Why are you like this? mama asks. Thought you’d grow out of it. I look away. Can’t look in eyes that can’t see me. I’m a teenager, tall as her. Thinking alone and lonely aren’t the same. Thinking alone is easier. Only one way to be alone but plenty of ways to be lonely and most all of them hurt the dark places inside. I don’t know why I’m like this mama, I whisper, I didn’t make me. She looks at me. Sighs.

Mama, it’s just — I’m not made for big crowds and small talk. For what a lovely day and gossip about what the neighbor said. I don’t know how to talk that kind of talk. Don’t even want to know how. I want to talk about bigger things, mama.

Like what? she asks and my words are wild horses, can’t stop them, they just run. Like what you dream of mama, and what makes your soul come alive, and if you could have one wish, what would you wish for?

Like what’s the last book made you cry and what do you dream that’s so big you can’t say it out loud without tears? And mama, I want to know why you were crying at three in the morning because I heard. But if I ask, you’ll just say it’s none of my beeswax. So why would I even ask, mama? I stop. Breathe.

I don’t know what that look is she’s giving me, but I think maybe she sees me now. Oh hello, Peter Pan, there you are. She sighs, shakes her head. Whispers real soft, what on Earth am I going to do with you, child.

I know it’s rhetorical but I answer anyway. Say I think you should go for ice cream with me, mama. Just you and me. Her eyes are still full of worry and what to do with me but she’s smiling just soft. Says okay sweetie, I’ll go get my purse.

---

I’m sitting on the shores of a far away lake. Thousands of miles from home. Watching waves crashing on rocks. Sky turning pink and orange and yellow. Sun sinking lower and lower. Gulls swooping and soaring and crying above.

I hear him before I see him. Shadow man across the lake.

Silhouette against the sun, a man playing a saxophone. Music washes over me and I drink deep. Think of Leonard Cohen crooning there is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in. I am parched earth and the music fills me.

Music and birds and water. Seeping in ears, filling my head, vibrating my chest and listening, my edges blur. Turns me to moss. Soft and fuzzy. Melts away the white borders until I think maybe I belong. Somewhere. Maybe even here.

Fills my heart, makes it grow a thousand times bigger. Can’t fit inside me, so I crawl inside it. I am eyes made of stars, arms of the universe, wrapping round oceans and mountains as I drink with my ears, listen with my heart. Don’t know what that song is he’s playing on that saxophone of his. Think maybe it’s the song of the introvert.

“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche