The Literary Dreamer

I always knew I was introverted, but I hadn’t reflected on this very deeply before. I have known almost all of my friends for years (and when I say “years”, I mean since at least elementary school.) I am incapable of connecting with other people on a sincerely emotional level unless I have been close friends with them for an extensive period of time. My newest friends I had met about a year ago (one of which is my boyfriend) and I had become acquainted with them through one of my best friends. I seldom spend time with people alone - excluding those within that close group - and I just about never meet new people by my own means. It’s not necessarily that I dislike other people, or that I regard them disapprovingly in any way. It’s just that I am uncomfortable around many strangers to the point that I feel as though spending time with them is more of a conscientious effort than a source of enjoyment and it becomes too tiring to consider worthwhile. Although I know meeting new people is fundamental and it is the only way my life will progress in any shape or form, and even though deep down I want to have a broader range of friends, I can’t bring myself to gather the motivation to meet new people. As high school is over and I’m beginning my first term of university in two months, this scares me a little.

I do not know how to strike a conversation with people I don’t know. This sounds ridiculous, seeing as though I am eighteen-years-old and should have learned this skill more than half my lifetime ago. I never had a problem making friends as a child. I wasn’t finding new best friends at every park and playground as my older sister was, but it wasn’t a struggle, either. Even freshman year of high school wasn’t hugely difficult in that aspect. Only within the past several years have I been shrinking into myself like some reclusive sea creature. I have wasted the past week and a half of summer vacation either in my backyard reading, or writing in bountiful quantities, or sleeping. I can’t say I half-minded this, either. I want to visit the beach and attend concerts and have bonfires with my friends as we did last summer, but I’ve had so much time with just myself and my thoughts that I feel as though it will seem almost unfamiliar. I don’t feel the least bit like spending another minute in this house, and I long for adventures and both familiar and unfamiliar faces, though I long to be alone as well. I’m almost certain that I’m in the process of losing my mind, if I haven’t lost it already.