I enjoy being alone.
I always have. I have early memories of going to my room to play just so I could shut the door and lock it, creating my own bubble of happiness. I played board games against myself, seeing if Alex 1 or Alex 2 would win. I created things, songs, drawings, Microsoft Word documents with way too many fonts. I found entertainment and contentment in solitude.
Fast forward to today and I am still that way. I crave weekends at my apartment when I don’t have to see a soul for 24 hours. I wake up whenever and don’t put on pants and alternate between watching TV and reading. Those days are recharge days and definitely needed.
But sometimes my introversion and independence screw me over.
They turn a healthy amount of alone time into isolation, and once I dip a toe in those waters, before I know it, I’m neck deep. I withdraw from people slowly, purposefully putting myself in places where I know people won’t be, shutting every door I can, and putting my phone on silent. Before long, I start to grow weary, yet crave the aloneness all the more. The very thing I need becomes the thing I don’t want. It’s kind of like when you’re thirsty and drink soda. It tastes great. It feels as if it’s satisfying you. But all it’s doing is making you all the more thirsty until you just have to get a glass of water.
And when I get into isolation mode, I struggle to communicate with people, relate to them, enjoy them. A sort of numbness comes over me and I fall into addictions. All of a sudden things become preferable to people. The people who rely on me for emotional support suddenly annoy the heck out of me, like they’re banging on my door when I have a killer headache.
And the worst of it all is, the isolation not only cuts off my need for community, but it makes me take steps away from God. Days will go by and I’ll realize I haven’t said one word to God and haven’t let him say one word to me. And when I’m like this, the idea of communicating with him doesn’t sound appealing, even though I love his voice and love our time together. It’s like a sort of laziness and apathy comes over me that makes everything seem hard and unenjoyable.
Part of the reason connection sounds unenjoyable is because when I’m isolated, a lie begins to grow in my head that says I am misunderstood and different, unreachable. So what in actuality is just a small gap between others and me turns into a Grand-Canyon-size chasm and the idea of walking that far seems exhausting.
But usually when I make myself take a step outside, make myself meet with a friend, go to Bible study, or actually talk to my coworkers, after a bit, I start to feel healthy again. The social anxiety fades, and I don’t worry so much about being different. The different-ness goes from being an isolating, lonely thing to a calling.
On my good days, I know that it’s my place in this life to stand apart, to be the one who breaches topics others don’t touch with a ten-foot pole. I know that I’m supposed to be authentic and vulnerable, because I see the power it gives other people. I know that I am supposed to be a mover and a shaker because I constantly have ideas and inspiration straight from Holy Spirit on how to make things better than they are.
The paradox of it all though, is that God ordained me to be this way. Me, the person who likes harmony, likes blending, who has answered the “what superpower would you have” question as invisibility every time. Me, the person who struggles with self doubt, who immediately assumes others are in the right and I’m in the wrong. And sometimes the paradoxical nature of my calling versus my nature seems like a cosmic joke. But I had a friend once who told me the most beautiful things are paradoxes. Maybe this is God’s way of making me beautiful.
But in order to live in the beauty and not fall into mess, I have to stay plugged in to people and God. This calling of standing out versus craving of staying hidden becomes painful when I’m not with God. It’s kind of like my version of Jacob’s broken hip in the Bible. It looks like a curse on the surface but is a blessing because it makes me rely on God.
The closer I grow to God the more I catch myself mid wall-building. Things will seem silent and blurry and I’ll hear God whisper, “Let me in. I’ll sit with you in the hurt and the confusion. This conflict of the soul is necessary. It is the only way you’ll grow.” Because it turns out, my worst bouts of isolation occur when a conflict enters my world that I can’t solve. Sometimes it’s a conflict with a person or with a responsibility I need to take care of or with a theological thing that I can’t seem to wrap my brain around. Whatever the case, I disengage and check out instead of staying present.
Today I decided I was tired of my numbness through isolation and addiction. So I took my lunch break to drive and cry in my car in a way that would make zero sense to anyone but God. I told him I didn’t understand x, y, and z in the Bible. I told him that I’m lonely and the people around me only make me lonelier, that my current state of relationships is doing zip for me. It’s not enough, it’s not enough, it’s not enough, I chanted over and over. My brain capacity isn’t enough, my relationships aren’t enough, life just isn’t enough.
After I was done venting, I prayed in tongues, because that’s what I do when I don’t know anything else to do. It infuses Holy Spirit in me like an emergency IV. And after I did that and tried to engage with the people around me in my day, I found that the dissonance inside me wasn’t so heavy. I even mentioned my Bible doubts to my Bible study and a guy told me, “You’re not the only one. I read stuff I don’t like in there all the time. But I promise you, it’s of Him. Just know that.” And while that sounds like an answer that could be unhelpful were I in a stubborn mindset, it actually really calmed me. It’s as if he was saying, “Just know that He’s all over it. Know that you’ll understand in time.”
I’m going to tell you, I still don’t understand. The writings related to gender and sexuality and any other social science is enough to make my liberal mind go crazy. But, I will know in time. And heck, even if I don’t know in time, who cares? I love Him. He loves me. The rest will fall where it needs to. It always does.
But back to my original point — as tempting as isolation is to me, a person who scored like 90% introvert on the Myers Briggs test, it will not serve me. I have to go to the hard places, with people and with God. It is the only way I move to the beyond and continue becoming the person I am supposed to be.
“Let me in the wall you’ve built around,
We can light a match and burn it down.”
-The Civil Wars
