The Quiet Truth of Who I Am
By Juliet Grayson
For much of my life, I thought I was an extrovert. I was sociable, animated in groups, often the one to keep a conversation alive. I’d learned how to read a room, how to bring energy, how to be what others seemed to need. It didn’t occur to me that this was more performance than preference.
But something was quietly eroding. After a day full of people, I’d come home feeling tired. Thin-skinned and brittle. I needed silence like oxygen. And slowly, I began to notice: the moments that truly nourished me weren’t the ones filled with chatter and company, but the ones where I was alone – walking slowly through the woods, sitting in stillness, writing, listening inward. Even catching up with admin!
It unsettled me at first. Was I withdrawing? Becoming antisocial? But as I let myself experiment with saying no, with protecting time for solitude, I discovered a deep well of restoration. Not loneliness – but aloneness. Spacious, grounding, rich.
I still enjoy connection, and there are times when extroversion feels delicious – alive, vibrant, shared. But now I can recognise it as a part of me, not the whole.
A client once said, “I thought I needed more connection, but what I needed was less noise.” It stayed with me. Because our culture prizes the extrovert – the busy calendar, the sociable self, the visible one. We learn to push through fatigue, override intuition, and misread our own wiring.
The truth is: I am an introvert who spent years pretending otherwise. And now, solitude is not a retreat from life – it is a return to it. I’ve learned to trust the recharge that happens in the quietness, the clarity that comes when I am not filtering myself through others.
So today, if you feel tired but can’t name why, ask yourself: Is my presence being requested – or required? And what would it mean to offer that presence to myself first?
There is strength in quiet. There is truth in choosing what fills you. And for introverts, that choice begins with being alone.
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