Introverts: Creatures of the Night
“You’re looking tired.”
“You look like you just got up.”
“Why don’t you go to bed earlier.”
These are frequent comments an introvert hears in the morning at work/school/whatever place we must subject ourselves to.
Night time, especially the wee hours is the one time of day that is completely quiet and undisturbed. These hours are the most valuable temporal real estate by far. They are the one time of day the introvert can live without inhibition, without the fear of unorthodox habits resulting in punishment. In the darkness, any extroverts still wandering about cannot watch everything everyone else is doing and their copious energies are nearly spent.
Even this brief glorious window of time cannot be enjoyed without price. As if they can smell the dried juice of forbidden fruit on one’s shirt front, those social people are there in the morning asking suspicious questions. It as if if they sense one has dared live for a little while outside their jurisdiction.
Affronted, the introvert shrinks from them and from the daylight in which they bounce about and thrive.
Does this sound paranoid to you, reader? If so, you just don’t get it.
Seeing aggression in probably innocuous behavior is part of life as an introvert:
-They are a part of the social machine that is causing harm to the introvert. This is aggression. It is not deliberate or even individual aggression, but that of an immune system or that of a strangling vine(of which they are but one probing tendril).
-They may know not what they do but this just makes it more annoying.
-It makes it more annoying still that it is impossible to talk with them about their conduct. Every incident is a reminder of one’s Incorrectness and their Correctness.
Bah! I hate the morning long live the night!
Zygmunt blogs at Kingdom of Introversion.
Introverts: Creatures of the Night appears here by permission.
[image via NOAA/Creative Commons]
Zygmunt on 12/21/10 in Art/Play/Myth, featured | 2 Comments | Read More
Comments (2)
Some of us in another scenario have found the opposite time to be alone: very early in the morning. Everyone around us seems to be up late and sleeping late the next day, so we getup at 5 or 6 am to have the world to ourselves.
I’m the same way, Zygmunt, now that I’m retired. I don’t go to bed until 5 or 6 AM, get up after noon or 1, but then feel guilty about it! I know I shouldn’t, because it doesn’t matter to anyone else, it’s just hard to drop old habits. I just love the quiet that exists after midnight.