My Winning Ticket To The Introverts’ Lottery
My journey as a writer to self-discovery, silence, and strength
There are two ways in which you can connect to another human, a stranger, on the deepest level — music, and words. Both music and words have this unique ability to lure and entrap someone. Someone who has never seen, heard, or felt you before.
Yet, good music and impactful words can make this person feel heard, listened to, bonded, and touched in inexplicable ways. They act as keys to the soul.
Growing up, I read books and listened to music that had the strongest effect on me, reaching parts of my soul that were privy to me and no one else. It felt like magic - how someone whose existence I wasn’t aware of until that moment, could affect me so deeply.
Although I hadn’t started writing until very recently, I always had a great sense of appreciation for writers who could connect, engage and emotionally influence their audience.
But the reasons I have mentioned above are not what drove me to write. It certainly sums up my goals as a writer. But this was not my ‘why’.
My Why…
To explain why I started writing, I need to share a glimpse of how and who I’m as a person. I would like to start with the fact that I’m a restrained introvert.
The restrained introvert tends to be reflective and even plodding in nature. Often unemotional, this type of introvert is often very controlled and may have very grounded energy. This type of introvert is often steadfast and very rock-like in nature. The restrained-type introvert is often the quiet, dutiful person that others tend to rely on. [4 types of Introverts ]
There is just one change I would make to the description above — Often appears unemotional.
As a child, I was silent and reserved. People termed it shyness. I didn’t show a lot of emotions and appeared calm, and well-balanced even in times of stress. People called me strong.
As I grew up, this is who I believed I was. A silent shy person who can handle anything that comes her way without showing the outside world what I feel inside. I wanted to be strong — for myself and the ones around me.
Now, imagine a person doing this for 25 years. It becomes a habit and with practice, I even got better at it. People could hardly gauge if I was scared, sad, anxious, angry, or even if I loved and valued my relationships since I didn’t say or share it enough. A few side effects had started popping up though. High levels of anxiety, leading to panic attacks at times.
Fast forward to the present, I have been feeling like a bottle of coke. You shake me a little bit and I can explode. I need to be counseled on how I can unlearn this habit of mine and start sharing and expressing more. Bottling up my feelings and emotions made me extremely sensitive and quite incapable of handling stressful phases of life.
That’s until I started to write.
Once I started writing, things changed somehow. My emotions and thoughts flowed naturally. I did not feel the need to restrict myself from what I wanted to say. I could share as much as I want, pour my emotions and feelings into my stories, without any invasion of my personal space.
Every time I write, I come out of it feeling lighter and happier. More than anything, writing made me embrace myself — my nature and my personality a little bit more every day.
My silence and reserved nature did not mean shyness. I just found it hard to open up to people since I take a lot of time to trust the people around me. It just meant that I had a big personal space bubble.
My calm and balanced nature did not mean I’m unemotional. In fact, on the contrary, I am highly emotional, passionate, and full of feelings. And I want to share so much with the world — just don’t know how. And my intrinsic nature doesn’t allow it to happen so easily.
I still struggle with expressing my feelings verbally and I know that writing is not the (only)solution to my problem. But it is still a start. And a very good one at that!
I discovered a new world starting this journey as a writer. A world where I’m free, where I don’t need to pretend, where I’m vulnerable yet strong, silent yet expressive. And more importantly, a world that is mine and only mine. I found my winning ticket to the Introverts’ lottery.
