little bitty girl

Many people other than those closest to me do not realize that I am an Extroverted Introvert. You would never guess it when you first meet me as I tend to be tremendously outgoing and engaging. In fact, I am actually quite shy, painfully so at times. My gregariousness happens to be my "wall," or "white noise" as I like to call it, a way of distancing myself from people that I haven't quite decided whether they are friend or foe.

I have wondered for ahwile now, where this behaviour stems from. I think the main reason is that my family is even shier than I am and sometimes experience social awkwardness. If there is anything that is true about me, is that I love my family beyond any description of words and I can never bear to see them uncomfortable, especially in social settings.

So, at a very young age, I designated myself as their social buffer. I would be the one to engage other people's attention so that my family need never feel any awkwardness.

However, there is a part of me that is naturally inclined to be a "performer." We are a family that loves to laugh, and the thing we enjoy most is laughing together. I was always hamming it up with my brothers (and being the youngest and the only girl, I was naturally the star every time)and acting silly as I have always been taught that laughter is joy.

So to my friends and loved ones, I am an open book. I am comfortable with being my natural extroverted self and they can always tell when I am putting on my social buffer or not. The hard thing is that with strangers, they sometimes think that someone who seems so outgoing can handle anything, even mean comments made in jest. What they don't realize is that they hurt the really shy person within.

Last week, there was such an incident with someone I thought could be a potential friend. And it's definitely made me step back from our potential friendship and whenever I am with that person, my extroverted social buffer is always on.