Confessions of an Extrovert

Arwen always tells me that I am a total extrovert, meaning I get my energy from being around other people, and it's totally true. I always feel my most motivated when I've been spending time with my peoples. Maybe part of the reason I start to get anxious when I'm alone is because I'm afraid that I'll run out of momentum and get to a place where I no longer feel motivated to do anything. When I was in Italy I spent a week touring Florence alone. I felt like that was the worst week of my trip. I was walking around the city by myself, seeing amazing art and architecture by myself and crying inside because I had no one to share it with. I let myself take three hours in the Uffizi gallery but when I walked out, I was so depressed at having no one to share all that beauty with that I literally walked blindly for twenty minutes with no idea where I was going.

The truth is, when I'm alone for too long I have no idea what to do with myself. I get antsy. When I'm alone for a weekend my guardian angel hears a lot of hysterical, bordering on insane laughter going on in my head. I guess I really expect other people to be there for me and help me make decisions. Co-dependent? Maybe. But deep down I know that much wiser people than I am are around to help me most of the time and when they're not I think that maybe I'll start to de-rail. That kind of makes it sound like I don't trust myself but I really do. It's just that I feel like I can trust myself but I've still got to lean on someone else for support. It took me a long time to get to that point, too. For a long time I think I was so mad at myself for feeling like I needed to lean on other people that I would force myself to be alone. Bad, vicious cycle. And usually I'd end up even worse off than I had started. So I finally decided; there is absolutely no reason in the world that I have to do everything on my own. That's when I started to trust and lean on other people.

So if I lean on you, thanks. It means a lot.