I Hate ... People?

I'm a loner, Dottie. A rebel.

Greetings from the Northeast Kingdom where it is a balmy 20 degrees today. And I say this with only a touch of sarcasm because, all things being relative, it actually does feel balmy compared to this morning when the temperature dropped below zero. Which happened to coincide with my task of wheelbarrowing hundreds of cheeses up a hill for 2.5 hours. I had to stop midway through to put on a second pair of socks because despite donning a single pair of Smartwools under my heavy duty arctic tundra boots I could not goddamned feel my toes. Like at all. Not that I'm complaining. I am thrilled that it has now reached tropical weather status here! I'm wearing fucking shorts and a CROP TOP up in here.

Not really. 

P.S. It's good to know that I'm THAT BORING that weather now a TOPIC of conversation for me. 

In other news, it's recently come to my attention that I am a straight up introvert. This is shocking news. If you know me at all you might also be surprised, because you see, I have historically been a fairly SOCIAL person. I can chat up a fucking light post. I crack nonsensical jokes and smile and laugh and shoot the breeze like a pro. Sit me next to your Aspergers-having cousin at Thanksgiving, and I'll have him regaling me with stories of his Trilobite collection in 15 minutes. There was a time when I prided myself on having plans with 3-4 different friends in a given day BECAUSE THAT IS HOW FUCKING POPULAR AND SOCIABLE I WAS. 


So you can imagine that I was a little worried about the severe isolation and remoteness and loneliness giving way to TRUE eccentricity I faced in moving up to Lowell, population 738. Admittedly, the first couple of weeks were rough, but I realize now that was simply withdrawal. After I'd begun to settle in, I was gobsmacked to find how ...okay I was just not interacting with more than one or two people on a daily basis. And not even just okay, but good. Better than ever. I had to re-evaluate my whole shit. I started sifting through my my life and past and it wasn't really that long before I began to find evidence that I had been a closet introvert THIS ENTIRE GODDAMNED TIME. It stands to reason, as my mother has perfected the art of being high-functioning anti-social. (Hi Bird!)

All sorts of other embedded clues began to surface. It was like finding out that your neighbor was a serial killer and then being like "Yeah now that I think about it, he was always loading up on hand saws and plastic tarps at the hardware store." Only in this scenario I am the serial killer.  I AM THE SERIAL KILLER. 

I grew up an only child, and have always been pretty gifted at amusing myself. Then, as now, I think about how much I'd have liked a sibling while simultaneously heaving a sigh of relief that there's one less person for me to have a dysfunctional relationship with. That relief extends into my casual social interactions now. Part of what I found so exhausting and overwhelming about living in New York was the potential for terrible/stressful/upsetting/frustrating exchanges, whether they were brief and superficial (hey dawg how about you close your goddamned legs so that I have room to sit on the seat next to you in this crowded subway car instead of taking up two seats-worth of space for your presumably monstrous penis/balls?) or deep and wounding, like the sort of fight you have with a friend that feels like a divorce or a terrible breakup. Add to that the fact that I worked in customer service for the last 4 years and you can understand why I would routinely arrive home from work and not want to talk to another human being for like a full fortnight. I'd frequently bail on plans, plans that seemed super fun and exciting and that I had been looking forward to for as much as a week or two because I needed so desperately to recharge my batteries from the general onslaught of human contact that I would hole up in my room for an entire weekend, drowning out the street noise with the dulcet tones of Olivia Pope for 8 hours at a stretch.

If my recent trip back to NYC is any indication, the more people I engage with, the more drama and emotional turmoil it begets. The crystalline silence will never annoy or disappoint you the way your best friend who bailed on dinner plans can. And even with the push of the holiday season and all it entails (the weekend rush to wrap and be-fruit hundreds of cheeses), I'd take a hundred hours of painstakingly wrapping little balls of chevre with grape leaves over selling a case of expensive Burgundy to some shit-head who belittles my intelligence and treats me like his own personal wine sherpa or selecting The Perfect Bottle of Obscure Sicilian Wine for a micromanaging wannabe wine hipster. FUCK THAT SHIT FOREVER. 

Point being, yeah. I'm an introvert. Color me surprised! Just give me some goats to hug and I'm GOOD. Placer 4 Lyfe. 

My Main Bitch