Thu, Jun 9, 2022 at 12:01 AM

Today I found out about a term called "lonely extrovert". I know a few people who enjoy social interaction, but have very few friends and even fewer people they trust and are always a little lonely. It's become a part of them and they carry it like a little bedraggled kid in their hearts. It took me a long time to articulate that loneliness.

I'm the youngest person in my family. I used to do everything with my sister when we were little. Even though we have an age gap of 5 years, we used to be partners in crime. Then she left home after 10th grade and went away to another city to study. Going from a small town to a metropolitan city at that age was incredibly challenging for her. She had to fit in with the other kids, there was bullying, class differences, challenges and so much more. But that's a different story. When she left, I did not grasp or realize that I was lonely without my sibling. Soon after that, I became used to living at home alone during the days when my parents went away to work. During this time, I found the Internet to keep me busy, or rather, the Internet found me.

The internet can be a good and a bad place depending on where you look. One click can damage you or one click can give you an incredible opportunity. It was a new experience having everything I needed right at my fingertips. I hit a few bumps but it was okay. That loneliness I felt brought me to the internet. I feel I've always been around social circles, but not really a part of them. Conversing with people, helping them or just discovering new people gives me an adrenaline rush. I've had the pleasure of being a member of awesome communities. The E-cell and tech club in college, the football team in school and now, being in greyb.

I went to a good college, got accolades, and was generally surrounded by a lot of people I would have loved to be best friends with. But I just could never break through. There's been a glass wall of my own making. So, I'd go out with people. I'd have experiences with them and admire and enjoy their company. But I could never really find the tandem a lot of people intrinsically recognize. Sometimes it feels like being the person who plays an instrument a beat later than the rest of the band.

I don't particularly like quotes because they have become very dual in nature and entirely dependent on the context and situation the person is in. Still, I'd like to leave with a quote by Andrei Tarkovsky on being asked, 'What would you like to tell young people?

"Learn to love solitude, to be more alone with yourselves. The tragedy of today's young people is that they try to unite on the basis of carrying out noisy and aggressive actions so as not to feel lonely, and this is a sad thing. The individual must learn from childhood to be on his own, for this doesn't mean to be lonely: it means to not get bored with oneself, because a person who finds himself bored when he is alone, it seems to me, is a person in danger" And that's that.

P.S. Here's something interesting.

Best,

Shreya