When we were younger, my twin sisters and I. There was this question my mother never tired putting to us, whenever we began a fresh term at school, or joined a new unit group at the teenage church, or attended a public function of any sort, be it family or otherwise. At leisure the question would break open, like water from coconut. It besieged us, these words, trailed behind us, waited on us, even as we lived in the consciousness of it's waiting. It spared nothing we did, as long as it involved the new things we did with "new" people.

The question was; "HOW MANY FRIENDS HAVE YOU MADE SO FAR. As a norm, she never asked " did you or did not make any friends. No, never.
Rather, almost always it remained an unchanging "HOW MANY.
To me it was presumptuous a question, a shallow one, a question asked with the calm and casual certainty that we would always make friends and have friends to make, or perhaps still, that friends would always make us and have us to make.

And of course, my sister , ohkvu and ofsi would reel out names upon names the length a stretching catalogue. Their callow identical faces pliant, eager to please, and eager to outdo each other on the game of whose friend was plentiest. As usual, my mother would nod back with a smile, her eyes beaming with approval, Then she would turn to me, in that half smooth half mechanical manner that suggested she just might have an idea what my answer would be.
" I K join us will you?
(Silence)
How many? She would prompt.
None.
Nine?
No. None. I'd maintain.
Then her gaze would settle on me, her eyebrows would knot in fervid desperation , lips pouted in frustration and she would say with an even firmer and resolute tenacity as she had formerly said similar words, before time;
"You need to change,
need to get out of yourself more.
need to look at your sisters.
God forbid your house is on fire.
God forbid you're ailing.
God forbid you need a hand of help.
And we, your father and I, are not there.
Who would you tell? who would you lay on?.

I would sit back and listen to her with a blank face and my posture drawn rigid. As I absorbed my chastisement. Which had with time, become for me, a ceremonial ritual, one I looked forward to.

So for quite sometime I have lived with the resident awareness of my own difference, the consciousness that I was not the same as everyone else, that something was wrong with me.
I did not feel the urgency most people felt to connect, to synchronise, to bond or become friends. Outings wearied me, drained me, and I did not know what it meant or felt like to be lonely. I was as it were, content with the friendship I had formed with myself.
Now, it was remarkable enough for me to be this way, to be this way in Africa. But, being male and first borne had made it a double anomaly.
Once, a loud cousin had told me that it was strange for a boy to be shy as though shyness here could be likened to a tight fitting prickly polo I had decided to wear and could take off anytime, as though being reserved and being shy were even the same thing. But really though, I had grown shy, had been socialized to shyness. Because in my corner of the world, if you did not have too many friends and was not noisy too often, you were shy.
Hence, I had developed a "not good enough" mindset and overview of my self and personality, and had retreated farther and farther away into myself into my shell. A withdrawn child I became. An acutely shy one. I searched for me.

But what was quite funny was that later, I had gotten random salvation from the least likely of sources an oxford dictionary.
It said " I was a quiet person who found interest in my own thoughts and feelings than in spending time with others. In short, it had termed me an INTROVERT.
And I had gasped. So, there was a name, a tag, an identity. I was not one lost and misguided, a strutting misfit amongst a crowd of contrasts, so to speak. So introversion was not an anomaly? I had asked of no one. And with this, the reality of a name, I knew certainly that were many others like me in the world, and I had found something close to comfort and then to peace.

lalasticlala

what's your take on introversion?