Final Paper - First Draft

It’s Friday night and I’m at a party. Despite the warm August air and cheery banter of my high school classmates, I’m less than happy. If anything, I feel lonely and self-conscious. I made some small talk earlier on with a German exchange student and a girl whom I went to elementary school with, but that only lasted for twenty minutes. Now, students are forming tighter circles of conversation and I’m becoming a mere observer of the scene. I begin to ask myself questions: Why am I the only one who’s having a horrible time? Why is it so difficult for me to talk to people? Am I abnormal because of these things? Then, I notice the music that’s playing in the background. It’s Lonerism, an album from an Australian band that I like called Tame Impala. I listen as Kevin Parker sings lyrics about his own introversion and social anxiety––lyrics that perfectly complement my predicament. I feel comforted, if only for the duration of the rest of the album.

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            I grew up as an only child with an overprotective mother. At first, this frustrated me. I desperately wanted to play outside with other elementary school kids and go to their sleepovers and parties. With time, however, I learned to quell this desire and enjoy the quiet time that I spent by myself instead, reading books, playing with stuffed animals, and watching cartoons. I always felt completely at ease in these situations––free to think and do whatever I pleased without fear of outside judgment. This often led to moments of self-discovery. I recall on one occasion that I became curious about a keyboard that was collecting dust in our guest room when I was five years old. I decided to pick it up and play it one day, producing a cacophony of notes that only I could find to be pleasing. If not for this experimentation in my alone time, I would’ve never known that I took an interest in piano––a hobby that I ended up pursuing for eight years.

            After some time, I noticed that I was somewhat different in the way that I behaved in comparison with my peers. I was never rambunctious or silly like the rest of them. Instead, I was quite serious in my demeanor and also very quiet and studious. My elementary school teachers loathed the fact that I rarely spoke up in class. Nearly every time I tagged along on parent-teacher conference nights, they would comment that they wished that I could “just speak up a little more.” Once I began taking gymnastics lessons, I was faced with a similar predicament. “I swear, one of these days I’m going to force you to have a shouting match with me,” my coach would tell me on nights when I was particularly quiet. I’d always smile a bit when she said this so that she wouldn’t think I was being impolite or disrespectful, but I was terrified on the inside.

            Everything became worse once I entered middle school. Suddenly, it seemed that everyone’s confidence had swelled––everyone’s except for mine, at least. Students in my English class offered their opinions on difficult literature without hesitation, while I could only mumble responses when forced. During lunchtime, I politely talked with any of the new students from other elementary schools who approached me, but otherwise I couldn’t bring myself to start conversations with anyone. I didn’t socialize much outside of school either. Besides attending gymnastics practices on weeknights, I stayed home the majority of the time, either studying or reading. Those few times when I did go to dances or sleepovers, I found them to be somewhat enjoyable, but not anything terribly exciting.

            When I noticed that others were ridiculing my behavior in subtle ways, I began to berate myself for my personality as well. The most common criticism came from my peers, who complained about the fact that I rarely tagged along with them on their outings. Initially, they attributed this to my overprotective parents, but later on they made jabs that I found to be much more personal, such as the fact that I was a “studious Asian.” My teachers also made somewhat rude comments about my personality, especially in front of the class. I still remember one incident in which my eighth grade computer applications teacher incessantly criticized my “under confident” posture and “inaudible” speaking voice throughout the entirety of my ten-minute long presentation. When I got home that day, I cried for an hour and convinced myself that something was wrong with me. Though the rest of my teachers weren’t nearly as cruel, many of them did pull me aside after class at least once to tell me that I should “stop being shy” because I was “too smart for that.” Again, I felt as though I was abnormal––being assertive and extroverted was apparently something that I was supposed to become overnight, and yet I just couldn’t do it.

            I reached my lowest point in my first year of high school: my parents divorced, my mother left, and I quit gymnastics. I felt as if I had lost most of my identity––I had spent so much time with my mother throughout my life, and I had assumed from a young age that I would continue to be a competitive gymnast through college. At school, I was lonelier than ever. No one was aware of my situation, and even if they had been, I knew that none of them would have understood the way that I felt. Often times, I was too depressed to hold genuine conversations with other people, and I rarely felt like leaving the house. On top of all of this, I was self-conscious about the fact that I had gained weight after quitting gymnastics and that I was still struggling to get over my shyness. I was more reclusive than ever.

            When sophomore year arrived, I was still lost. That is, until I decided to visit a record store one weekend in October. I purchased the first CD that caught my eye: Favourite Worst Nightmare by a British band named Arctic Monkeys. I played it as soon as I got home, and suddenly I was in awe––never before had I cared for music, but the guitar riffs and scrappy vocals on this album sounded absolutely perfect to me. I recall that I found the subject matter of one song in particular, “Teddy Picker,” to be intriguing. The lyrics argue against mainstream culture, mindless fame, and––in a subtler way––extroversion. This surprised me because assertiveness and extroversion are often perceived as positive attributes in our country. For the first time, I realized that being introverted wasn’t necessarily something that I should feel ashamed about, and that being extroverted had its downfalls too.

Teddy Picker - Arctic Monkeys

            In the coming months, I became interested in other bands of a similar genre as Arctic Monkeys. As it turned out, many of these groups addressed topics such as shyness and social anxiety in their songs. One of the best examples of this is the Smiths, a British band from the early eighties. In the single “Ask,” Morrissey sings, “Shyness is nice, and shyness can stop you from doing all the things in life you’d like to”––words that perfectly reflected my personal frustrations when I was fifteen.

Ask - The Smiths

Another great example is Tame Impala, the Australian group that I mentioned earlier. Practically every song from the band is chock-full of lyrics discussing loneliness, awkwardness, and shyness. Though these lyrics sometimes express frustration and sadness, many times they are also optimistic and accepting. For instance, in “Solitude Is Bliss,” Kevin Parker makes this statement about his introversion: “Space around me where my soul can breathe…Nothing else matters; I don’t care what I miss. Company’s okay; solitude is bliss.”

Solitude Is Bliss - Tame Impala

            By listening to songs such as these and gaining more life experience, I’ve become the person who I am today: still very timid and slightly frustrated by my shyness, but ultimately much more accepting of the fact that I’m introverted. I no longer care when people complain to me that I’m not social enough, and I never feel guilty for enjoying the time that I spend alone. Most importantly, I now recognize the benefits of being introverted. Reading various Internet articles allowed me to discover these advantages, as well as reflecting on my own experiences. A piece called “Better Off Alone” from Rookie Mag––in which contributor Hazel Cills delineates similar experiences and sentiments as the ones mentioned in this paper––is a good example of one of those articles. In this essay specifically, Cills explains that “spending so much time alone actually helped [her] define who [she is]”––a statement that I can relate to quite well. As I explained earlier, I feel as though solitude has led me to moments of self-discovery––not only for trying piano as a child, but also for learning about various topics that interest me (e.g. feminism), figuring out my music taste as a teenager, and picking up my latest hobby: bass guitar.