Girl code: Dear introverted humans, are you OK?

Lately, I have been thinking about how it feels like to get married to an extrovert if one is an introvert. Especially during this ‘stay-at-home’ period. You know, it takes a lot of teamwork for these two groups to coexist.

I grew up with such parents. My late mother was an extrovert while my late father was an introvert and I have lost count of the number of times my father breathed in and out and just sighed in surrender.

There are those days my mother would dance back into the house after work and she would expect everyone else to join her. Of course, my father wasn’t joining in at any cost.

Instead, he would ask us to join my mother and dance. You would think there was something worth dancing for, probably some good news only to realise she just felt like dancing.

Extroverts sometimes just create their own fun and ride on it. We are eight siblings in our house and I can confidently take the trophy for being an extrovert. I gladly took after my mother.

That’s why I never really understand how someone can sit in the house and sulk all day with people around them. To me, if you don’t feel like talking to anyone, you are better off taking a walk away from people or, better still, lock yourself in a room. Just don’t sit your small behind where people are and spoil the mood.

There’s one ex boyfriend who understood me very well. He would have no problem with me waking up in the middle of the night to sing the national anthem. To him, I was that cute little routine to light his dull world.

Many are the days when I tied a sisal skirt around my waist and danced to him all the traditional songs in my busy head. There are those days I pushed him to the edge and he would sneak out of the house just to run away from my excitement.

Whenever he needed his peace, he would avoid coming back to the house when I was still awake. We lived with his sister and he would call her and ask, “Is Beryl already asleep? Tell me when she falls asleep”.

One thing he never realised is that my excitement never expires or runs out. If you find me asleep today, brace yourself for a double dose the next morning. Sometimes he would send me a text in the course of the day, “Baby, please, not today. Just stay calm when I come back home in the evening as I have deadlines to beat.”

You should have seen how hard it was for me on those days. Being told to sit still like a statue is never part of my daily life. On such occasions, I would excuse myself and go visit my siblings because there’s no way I was going to sit still for more than an hour.

I am the kind of woman who will rush and jump on you unceremoniously while you are seated on the couch. Thank God I don’t weigh much because I would be behind bars for breaking several bones. So if ever you are around me, stay alert because I am that person who pinches you from the blues and laughs about it. I will put salt in your tea, serve it to you and sit at a corner waiting to see your reaction.

Again, I don’t expect you to start throwing tantrums about all that. It’s supposed to be fun for crying out loud! My man dreaded long weekends, no wonder he would ensure we spent most of them sightseeing. There’s something about sightseeing that calms the adrenaline in most extroverts.

I have been wondering how such couples are surviving during this time. I mean, if I were still in a relationship with my introvert, this is the time it would have ended because I would have been too much for him. Too much, yet there’s the curfew, the lockdown and stay at home.

On second thought, this is probably the time I would have successfully turned him into an extrovert.  Dear introverted humans locked up with extroverted ones, hang in there, things will be fine soon.

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