Personality Shift

When I was a kid, I used to be so afraid of adults. When our parents took us to grown-up parties, I found it difficult to stand near them even if they were relatives. I hated being talked to or carried around and asked to sit on their laps. I just wanted to be left alone. My dad told me that I used to hide behind his legs whenever an adult approached me and that as a toddler, I immediately looked away when someone looked me in the eyes.

At times when we had visitors at home, I’d hide in our room and pretend to be busy with something. There was this invisible fear in me that I never really understood.

Growing up, I’d been shifting from being an introvert to an extrovert and back. In 6th grade and most part of high school, I found myself unafraid of meeting new people. My friends described me as being ‘friendly’. The proof is on a sheet of paper during an exercise in class where classmates wrote down something about you.

But then, after college, I quickly turned back into my old self: the girl who doesn’t mind being alone and gets tired of being around strangers. Don’t get me wrong—I like my friends. It’s just meeting new people drains me.

Sometimes, I’m excited to meet someone especially if they’re easy to befriend, but other times it’s a drag. I wonder if, in the next few years, I’d shift into this completely different person, look back and think of how different I used to be. Or maybe I’d just be the same person.