I can circumstantially pretend to be outgoing and enjoyable for short interactions with strangers or people with little impact on my life. Phone calls and virtual work meetings for 1 hr or less are OK, but you bet your ass I’m walking away from my desk immediately afterwards to decompress.

The kicker is I question whether I’m actually introverted. I’ve always had an incredibly difficult time making friends, even as a kid. The isolation is absolutely soul crushing sometimes. I crave and thrive on very close friendships… Even 1-2 is enough, which in our society is conducive to dating – and I eventually met an extroverted ray of sunshine who I’m still with. I still don’t feel like I belong around her friends, though, all these years later. Social anxiety is a bitch.

A strange observation: I’ve found myself far more comfortable with people from a certain region, about 3 hrs from where I grew up, but had no exposure to as a child. Interactions with them tend to be relatively effortless and enjoyable (is this what extroversion is like?).

In summary, I very much despise the way I am, but most people are on a significantly different social wavelength than I. The energy required to match those foreign wavelengths is measured in gigawatts… except for my wife and a few prior long term girlfriends.

I plan on someday experimenting with psilocybin as a therapeutic tool to better understand and potentially (partially?) mitigate some of my social puzzle and trauma believed to be a source of “introversion”.

Perhaps this resonates with you or someone else reading this.