People react with disbelief all the time when I say I'm an introvert - I talk and laugh and can make friends in an instant. Intro/extroversion isn't defined by sociability though, it's defined by how one derives energy - either from oneself or from others. I remain a staunch introvert, but even by my own measurements I have grown vastly more extroverted over time.
I first noticed this during AmeriCorps, where in contrast to my previous stages of life, I talked so much more than I wrote. I lamented my lack of writing, and it seemed correlated with how much I was sharing with those around me. The day to day triumphs and travails found their resting place in conversation with my fellow corps members, so I didn't have to put everything to bed here (and didn't have the energy anyway to rehash it). It was great and sad, to have these parts of my life and experience so diffused in those around me. We were stronger for being woven into each other, but when it was all said and done, there seemed to be less that was concretely "me" and more that was a result of them.
It is great and sad because this is how life is supposed to be lived, in connection with others. To have people pay attention and bear witness to what you're going through is significant to how our lives have meaning. And yet, those pieces of us that are supposedly perceived, remembered, and cherished by others aren't necessarily any or all of those things. And even if they are, it doesn't always stay that way. People move on, people forget.
I think about the pieces of me that are lost to others, lost to time. It's evidence of a life lived, even if I feel like there is less of me sometimes. And then I think about the pieces from others that I've retained, that have become a part of me.
Lately, I've been thinking of the one I loved who didn't love food. Who turned away my offerings and said I had to be okay with it. It wasn't just the concept of food as affection that had been upended, but my whole entire life-assumption that food mattered to everyone, and as such could serve as a basis for connection. For him, food was simply fuel and I learned to enjoy it less, in a way. Not that he didn't try to venture out from meat and potatoes but I met him halfway and I think about this when I enjoy food now, not too flagrant or fawningly as I may have/had once. Because I remember alienating him and I loved him too much to do that again.
I think about the one I loved who was all-consumingly afraid. How I thought it was shyness, and tried to surmount it with excitement. How I thought it was apathy and tried to cope by feigning apathy myself. How I took a lack of action to be a personal affront, because my own go-getting nature was supposed to be achievable for anyone who wanted it enough. My own learned fearlessness collided with his fear, and I've since learned to be afraid again. And how it is to be convoluted - to want but never take, to feel but never love. And so I relate backward, because that's how I love someone who is no longer there.
And in going through these pieces that are now a part of me, so much so that I enjoy less and fear more, I wonder at the cost of connection, of extroversion, of trading parts of yourself for better or for worse. And it's no wonder that I'm here, introverting myself, trying to untie the ties that bind us.