Expectations and the failure to meet them.

"I'm normal!" I exclaimed the other day at work.
The receptionist looked up quizzically from her work and said "you say that like you are surprised"

Not surprised, just declaring....

I'm not an extravert, I'm not the life of the party (I know some of you find that surprising). I can remember being at a party with my (then) husband years ago, I found myself sitting on a couch having a quazi conversation with girls much younger than me whom I'm had never met before. At one point they both got up to go find their boyfriends, I looked around for a familiar face. I couldn't find one. Not even my husband.

I wasn't upset, just not impressed at being left in a room full of people I didn't know and didn't share an similiar intersts with.

It seemed the more I was expected to go out and have a good time, to mingle, to fend for myself...the more I pressure I felt and the more introverted I felt. I began shrinking into corners and reluctantly going out.

I have no problem sitting back and watching the happenings in a party, I'm pretty content to ease my way into meeting people. But to some unless you are dancing on the table it would appear you are not having fun.....

So in the last few years I have examined that phenomenon in my life, why the pressure to be extraverted makes me more intraverted, and I discovered.....I'm not alone.

I'm normal.

The more people I talk to the more I discover that I am not fundamently flawed (well at least not in this area....)