Jessica Harper Uncanceled

“What are you doing you out here?” said my friend Deanna.

“I, er, just wanted some fresh air,” I said. “Too much wine.”

“But why are you in the bushes?” she said.

It was a fair question. I was in some bushes. In some woods in the grounds of the hotel where our friends Oliver and Kayleigh were holding their wedding reception.

“I’m doing a pee,” I said, above the pumping sounds of Mambo No5, wishing that Deanna would just skedaddle. Maybe she could investigate whatever happened to mambos one through four.

“They have toilets inside as well, you know,” she said.

“What are you, the Pee Police? I fancied an outdoor one. Anyway, why are you in the bushes?”

“I was looking for you.”

Deanna is one of my best friends but she has never fully “got” me. She will phone me when she’s walking down the street. She can’t be alone and unentertained. I find these poeple needy. I know she’s my friend. But still.

“I’m fine,” I said. “Thank you for checking.”

Was I fine? I suppose in an ideal world I wouldn’t have been forced into some scratchy bushes in some dark woods to avoid having to talk to people (for the record, I wasn’t doing a pee). 

But I was (and indeed am still) an introvert and was just following my nature, if you’ll excuse the pun. I was in the woods for two related reasons: one was that I was trying to avoid talking to people, and the other was that I had drunk too much and fancied a nap (the over-drinking in itself being a coping mechanism of introverts in social situations). (Note to self: start website for introverts called Peeing in the Bushes).

“You have something on your face,” said Deanna.

“Oh yeah,” I said, breezily, like it was a fashion choice. “It’s a leaf.”

I wandered back with her sheepishly to the wedding, feeling like Steve McQueen when he keeps getting caught escaping by the Nazis in The Great Escape. I then faced the usual questions that introverts are so used to: “Are you okay? Where did you go? Why is there a slug on your arm?”

And then the What You Missed speeches: “You missed Ryan leading the macarena! You missed them cutting the cake! You missed the xyz!” 

Oh yes, the xyz. I’ve missed a lot of xyz in my time.

I eked out out the rest of the evening like a football team running down the clock because they are ahead on points. I knew that in just an hour I would be in the taxi, in my own space, staring out the window. In other words, Heaven. 

If I could just get through the hour I’d be home and dry. Best of all, the next day was a Sunday and I could stay in bed all day if I wanted, doing something sinful and enjoyable with the curtains drawn, like watching a Drew Barrymore movie.

For that last sixty minutes, I used some old introvert strategies, like playing people off each other (it’s easy when they’re drunk). So when Adrian said where have you been, I said oh I was round the other side of the building, hanging out with Laurie. And then when I bumped into Laurie and she said where were you, I said hanging out with Adrian. The booze-soused fools fall for it every time.

The clock reluctantly gave up its final minutes and there was the taxi. I said congratulations to the happy couple and went home in my own space.

The Drew Barrymore movie was Riding in Cars with Boys. 

It was terrible.

I loved it.

**

If you want to know what extreme introverts look like on vacation, there’s an infamous photo of me at Disney World in Florida when I was nine, my face crumpled, nearly crying, a portrait of deep ennui. 

My mom and I were looking at this picture recently, and she said why were you unhappy? I don’t know why she thought I would remember that, thirty years after the fact, but she was right: I did.

“Because I’m an introvert and I hate being in people’s companies for long periods,” I said.

You see, I now fully understand my introvertism and just spit out this explanation to whoever I think could benefit from it. Extreme introvertism, as I call it, is introvertism without the apologies. 

“The definition of an introvert is someone who prefers calm, minimally stimulating environments. Introverts tend to feel drained after socializing and regain their energy by spending time alone. This is largely because introverts’ brains respond to dopamine differently than extroverts’ brains. In other words, if you’re an introvert, you were likely born that way.”

Introvert, Dear

Childhood wasn’t easy, as any introvert will tell you. There is the constant suggestion that there is something weird about your not wanting to be staring at other people and jabbering away all the time. Well, guess what, we might be quiet but we think you are needy. I mean, conversation, what’s that all about? Fifty per cent of a conversation is what I already know anyway because it’s my side of the conversation. It’s already in my head.

And then it gets worse when you’re a teenager, as many teenagers just sulk and withdraw anyway, so it’s impossible to tell which are the introverts and which are just normal fifteen-year-olds. Also you don’t know who you “are”, something which seems to preoccupy modern young people even more than it did when I was that age. So identifying your own introvertism at that age is problematic.

As a teen, I remember going through hell, sitting in my uncle and aunt’s living room while a family occasion was playing out in the kitchen or on the patio and wishing I was somewhere else. “Going through hell” might sound an exaggeration but it really did, it made me so stressed. I hated family gatherings. And my family are all lovely people. God knows what it’s like for introverts in families where everybody is at each others’ throats.

So I’d browse my uncle’s book collection yet again, which wasn’t very interesting. Hmmm, shall I look through through The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich again? (that was literally one of them). I’ve looked at a lot of bookshelves in my life. A lot of them. And you sometimes bump into other introverts there at parties and have a laugh about it.

And then, as you get older, there are the house shares. On one occasion in my twenties I moved in with my three best friends, we did the wreck of a place up nicely, and then after six months of actually living there I got my own place instead. I couldn’t handle the groupiness of it. The constant awareness that at any given moment I either was being sociable or I wasn’t.

By more late thirties I understood what I was, although I still tried to work against my nature, and I also felt bad about it being my nature. I never felt worse about that then the time I was freelance I paid $100 to go to an all-day media networking event in Atlanta.

I nervously walked in to the meet and greet session, held a croissant permanently to my face to avoid conversation, while performing a slow, lame circuit of the room, smiling benignly, avoiding all glances.

And then I left the building.

I just walked straight out. 

After roughly ten minutes. 

That was one expensive croissant.

I hated myself for it and berated myself for not trying harder. Ironically I later became president of a business networking group for a six-month rotation and had to meet about an estimated 150 people in that time. That was so unnatural to me that I sometimes hid in the toilets until it was time to start, missing all the important networking opportunities. Yet again I just felt I was being a wimp. 

Sociability, bleurgh. And when you’re an introvert, there always seems to be some social occasion or other coming up, organised by the extroverts.

“It’s Jason’s fiftieth!” That’s Jason’s problem, frankly. 

“He’s having a party!” Why, doesn’t he have any books? And anyway, Jason is YOUR friend. Nice guy but I don’t owe him anything. What’s he going to say: “Oh no, your friend Jess who I’ve only met four times isn’t coming? What a bummer. Take down the bunting.” 

Yes, it sounds rude and perhaps ungrateful (?) and most times I wouldn’t say this aloud to anyone. But people are very slow to understand introvertism. Plus, I once decided that I would rather upset someone than have to spend an evening making convo. This is the new breed of introverts I am inventing: extreme introverts.

Things are changing, thanks to the widespread dissemination of information via the internet. Introverts are fighting their corner. Nothing has given me more comfort and entertainment than the website Introvert, Dear, packed with articles about us, every one of them nailing it. If you’re an introvert you’ll feel you’ve come home.

And Susan Cain has written a whole book about it, Quiet, which has garnered a lot of publicity although to be honest I found it a bit dull and gave up after 80 pages (it’s just endless examples of great things introverts have done, which isn’t what I really want to read about. I prefer the coping and war stories aspects).

Survival tips for extreme introverts

1) Whittle down your friends a bit. Freeze out the fringey friends who might cause problems by asking you to stuff you really don’t want to go to. Just say no. Is that a wise strategy for a happy life? Works for me.

2) Consider a job where you don’t have to deal with the public much. Why the hell did I choose to become a reporter? Because I saw Fletch and thought it looked fun. Oh the naivety of youth. Coding is probably good, if you’re good at that sort of thing. Maybe zookeeping. Maybe someone who does coding for the zoo? “Jess, the landing page for the monkeys is looking tired, can you work some magic?” “On it.”

3) Don’t feel bad about being an introvert. Exroverts talk because they want to, not because they think it’s helping society. I do want deep, meaningful conversations, of course I do. It’s just that I want them in bullet points and preferably under 200 words.

4) People whose dating profiles say they like “talking deep into the night”. You might want to think twice about connecting with those guys. That’s not to say introverts hate all conversation, but we don’t like it for its own sake. And we certainly don’t like doing it if we’re not on the same wavelength as the chatter.

5) Have an afternoon nap or carve out regular ‘me’ time that everyone else accepts is part of your routine. I have had an afternoon nap practically every day since I was a child. It’s just how my body clock works, for some reason. I feel really angry if I don’t get it. Friends and family expect me to take it. It gives me 90 minutes alone (although I am actually sleeping, it’s not just a ruse, like the peeing in the woods). But you can use it to read or just contemplate life if you’re not into the whole napping scene.

Extreme extroverts: conclusion
“Nobody puts Baby in the corner,” as Patrick Swayze memorably says in Dirty Dancing. He then grabs “Baby” and forces her on to the dancefloor, in the worst moment of introvert shaming in history. Poor Baby, she just wanted to be left alone to stare into space with her own thoughts.

But no, along comes Mr Sexy Pants with his plans of making her dance in front of everyone (although she ends up loving it, which kind of sets our cause back, suggesting introverts could be extroverts, they just haven’t met the right social occasion yet).

I’ve had the time of my life? Yes, if you leave me alone.

Any other extreme introverts out there? Do you feel you are just not trying hard enough and will regret it? Are you scared you will be on your death bed and wonder (just after you’ve wondered if you spent enough time in the office; oh yes, there’s a lot to think about on your death bed) if you should have been more sociable? 

Introverts and (shudder) extroverts alike, share your experiences below.

Thanks for reading.