According to TikTok, yes.

Also, according to TikTok, no…but with caveats.

I’m caught up in the land of algorithm where I’m told that “avoiding people” is a trauma response. A sign that my parasympathetic nervous system is stuck in freeze. That I’m mentally ill and need to fix myself by lying supine on the floor and moving my hips from side to side to “release my past”.

Or maybe, just maybe, I’m an introvert, whose main method of energetic recharge is being alone.

I know that tapping into that question of “how to fix our lives” is a big win for views on social media, but when they show up again and again on my FYP, it’s hard to not look inward and wonder, is there something wrong with me?

We live in a world that celebrates extroversion. All the fast paced, productivity in work, in home, in life is applauded as a barometer for success. How fast can you rise to the top? How quickly can you run that mile? Can you write that book in a month?

But what if I don’t want that kind of life because it goes against my internal pace?

For us introverts, we’re regarded as the weird ones, cartoonish shadows who skulk in the corners at parties and seek out the nearest cat. But that’s not introversion.

Introverts don’t necessarily prefer to be alone, so much as they reenergize through quiet and, sometimes, solo activities.

As an introvert, trying to live in an extrovert world is exhausting. I don’t want to say yes to every invitation. I don’t want to spend every day in the company of large groups of people. And apparently, that makes me strange.

Well, then, I’m embracing the strange.

Contrary to what social media tells you, there’s nothing wrong with wanting alone time. There’s nothing wrong with saying no to a dinner you don’t want to attend. And there’s nothing wrong with you if you don’t want to be surrounding by people 24/7.

You are allowed to have preferences, to like quiet, to not want to be in conversation all the time. And that preference for solitude doesn’t mean you have some deep seated trauma that needs to be unearthed.

Maybe there’s something to be said for getting to know ourselves and to go with our own flow, not the flow of a society who tells us to swim against the current. You’re okay as you are.

Until next week, friends.