By the time he left it was nearer to four am. I washed up and settled myself into bed, with the radio playing, set very low, as is my habit when alone for the night. For a few moments I enjoyed the aloneness, the still and quiet; also the knowledge that with a few exceptions, I was the only one awake at that time. Others who were making their way home were either finishing a work shift or too inebriated to appreciate the moment, I would suggest but maybe that is arrogance on my part. I lapsed into sleep relaxed and exhausted.
I awoke five hours late and embarked on a decided choice NOT to see anyone. This is a luxury for me. My partner is highly social (to my mind) and enjoys interrupting me even when we have a relaxing day, where we both agree to read, watch something saved for our enjoyment or work on our respective projects.
There was a knock on our window. I knew from the manner and force that it was a close friend. In a moment my feelings hardened and I remained where I was, conducting a mental inventory of the windows, the blinds etc. and whether they would betray that I was at home. I concluded they wouldn't and settled back to my book. There was a second knock and I began to feel guilty, producing a list of reasons why (should that be justifications?) I would not answer. The main one I hit on was - what would I have done if I had been writing for a living and working? I would have ignored the knock...so I did. They went away....
I allowed myself to drift and settle on what took my interest throughout the day. So much so that I hardly ate - preferring to drink coffee interspersed with glasses of water. The evening came and I received a few messages from my friend thanking me for the evening and angling for a visit that evening. I switched off my mobile and keep all the curtains closed against the outside world. Twenty four hours pass and the only interaction with another human was a call from my partner - replete with a cold and suffering, despite the trip to the hallowed Brighton and Sussex.
Being an insomniac for almost all my life, at least as long as I can remember, I find sleeping, either getting there or staying there, difficult. Melatonin (3mg tablets) has helped and I decided to take advantage of no distractions and took one - getting into bed at a little after ten pm; again radio on playing a CD of Derek Jacobi narrating the Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. I slept, deeply, waking fully at ten am.
The phone went almost immediately and I felt invaded - I was cleaning my teeth on a bright Sunday morning and someone wanted a piece of me already! It was the friends that had called the day before - "was I up for a visitation...hello? Helloooo?" I shook my head and decided not.
Post breakfast (a coffee with three spoonfuls of drinking chocolate and sweeteners - a rare indulgence) my partner called - still full of cold and with news of his return later tonight. Settled back and did a little reading, caught up on the news; carefully avoiding anything that might anger me. While upstairs listening to a radio play there was a knock at the door; two different hands knocked - one the heavy fist of my large friend and the less insistent tap of his wife. Again a list of excuses spilled through me; why I shouldn’t, why I should! I again waited and they went away. I justified this with the excuse that they expected BOTH of us to be here and really they had come to see BOTH of us and to find only me would be ... disappointing or at least not as fulfilling or entertaining. I was saving them from an less that ecstatic experience.
I went back to my computer. I know that this is partly because I have taken two study days away from work - tomorrow and the day after - to complete the compilation and tweaking before submission for final assessment for The Art of Poetry. I am getting myself ready to work hard. I then was drawn, in a way that only the net can do - random links and the "what's that" scenario which results in "how did I get there?" - to a ten myths about introverts.
I read them and ticked off each one in turn. The final quirk was a link to a blog which gave the following poem as an observation of an introvert and it rang through me instantly:
I’m nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there’s a pair of us — don’t tell!
They’d banish us, you know.
How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!
–Emily Dickenson
I think I have found something through this course that I feared - feared the course not the something. I am not grumpy, difficult or, as my partner and many of my friends and work colleagues suggest, a control freak (although I am that too), I am an introvert.
I hate "role-play" in the workplace, giving any kind of speech and only finding I can speak out during a meeting of my peers when something angers me or there is an untruth. I am beginning to understand that my couple of hours a night, in my office surrounded by my keepsakes, relics, books, photographs etc. is my re-charge time; my daily re-charge. It also serves to allow me to think and write. Thankfully my partner understands this need and activity - being a violinist he needs space, time and aloneness to practice and play.
This also explains my reluctance for writers groups and circles. I simply don't feel any desire to go. I admire anyone who can stand up and give a speech, read their own work out to their peers for advice and study or stand and sing but it's not for me. I don't want to be a frog....
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