Introversion

Chelsea Donoho

In sixth grade, I laid out my garden: 10 by 12 feet, packed with annuals, some planted as starts from the nursery, some as seeds, with ‘Heavenly Blue’ morning glory against the east wall of the garage. This was my refuge through the confusion of adolescence—this and my books and the 40-acre field out back that the school district used as a cross country course.

During my senior year I gained the friendship of several other runners and introverts, though I didn’t have that name for us until 10 years later, when I read David Kiersey’s book, Please Understand Me. By then I was traveling for work, visiting flower growers and going to floral trade conventions with the other staff members at my magazine, and on every trip I would have to stay back one evening in the hotel room and get room service and read. I think they felt sorry for me, but I began to see that when I would speak up about this, it seemed to embolden others who needed the same. Too many parties for us.

I do not have to apologize for this anymore; introversion has become recognized and mainstream, though still not always recognized as an energetic orientation. Traveling for work—if I had to share a room with a co-worker and every meal with other people and never be alone all day, I started to lose my vocabulary. My most extreme experience was a 10-day trip to the middle of Kansas, a field research trip to monitor echinacea populations, as that area happens to be the world epicenter for wild native Echinacea angustifolia, a prized herbal medicine. After several days of constant togetherness with the group I could hardly eat or speak. I just counted plants. When I got home at 9 p.m. on the last night, I stayed up until 2 just to be alone and read. It revived me.

I come from a family of introverts—both parents, both siblings. Relatives, too. No one asked if I was okay when I went to my room to read. Everyone was quietly working at individual projects, happy to have others near at hand. Mom, after she got home from work, needed to be left alone to eat crackers and milk and do the crossword puzzle.

But introversion is not the same as isolation, and in this pandemic time I have spent months seesawing between the existential fear, made more intense by my choice to live in a rural setting, and introversion (the morning run, the bedtime read, the flower farm work, writing this journal, walks with one friend at a time). There are moments when my energy is a sphere just a little wider than the span of my arms. In good moments, it’s lit by candles and the moon and my imagination. In difficult moments, I practice making a shift, just a couple of degrees, making some small momentary change, to try to re-enter into the sustenance of introversion.