Loner

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The word “Loner” is a noun for someone who likes being alone. I say I’m not lonely, but I’m living alone so I must be a loner.

After reflecting on past history and how I relate with the world, I do better when I’m alone.

Introvert? An introvert is a reserved person focusing on own self? No, I’m not really that but I am selfish.

Bryers-Miggs personality test with the I-N-P-J or some such letters to spell out what you are defined to a formula finds me as an extravert with an intuitive personality, thinking and perceiving. I had, from the test, which as all test can be cheated, high musical, naturalist and logical intelligences.

So what does that mean?

I can be an extravert around people. It is the jester in me. I clown around and make a lot of noise either to attract attention or push people away by my obnoxious behavior.

Is this action just a facade?

Looking back I see myself alone in my room not feeling part of a family. Going to school and not being a good student or a participant in sports due to bad eyesight and lack of confidence made me a loner. I didn’t know how to join in and was never chosen.

Junior high or middle school that I believe is the time when the shell of your life is formed wasn’t much better. School exposed me to choices. I was interested for the first time in woodworking and using power tools but the teacher was a dike and never reinforced at home. Physical education was a disaster since all us boys had to take showers together, which was so weird at school, but perfectly normal with my friends at the beach. The winter months were full of going to dull classes, walking home, and staying in my room except for meals. The summer months were enlightening to a freedom of self-exploration and adventure that wasn’t formatted.

My parents tried to involve me into a life they wanted me to follow. Country club participation of golf and swimming, cotillion dances, summer camp, and other activities that would force me into settings with people who I didn’t fit in with due to lack of money or prestige but could look and act like them for the ruse of the parents. Actually it would have been easy to accept this way of being, but it did not feel right. I knew there had to be something more.

The beach gave me time to understand myself without being validated by those around me. At the same time I started playing music that helped fill my alone time. I could entertain myself with art and music and didn’t need others to fulfill my time.

Different? Sure after a while, I became a different personality from those in school. I wasn’t part of the club or the team. I didn’t go to pep rallies or the prom. Some would say I was just being an artsy-fartsy bohemian but I just wanted to be alone.

I enjoyed the company of a few in high school due to the weekend parties and even wrote some musical background to a friend’s poetry but much of the time was spent alone in my room absorbing myself in the English invasion soundtrack and artwork.

The only team I ever joined was bands, but they came and went and rotated and traveled from place to place with different faces and different sounds. It wasn’t the band(s) I was interested in at the time it was the music. I’d escape whatever was going on around me with music and art.

Not to say that any young American lad full of testosterone wasn’t interested in the finer sex, but I didn’t have the confidence to follow through with so much of the attraction. The telephone and letters full of drawings filled the gaps between brief spurts of aggressive behavior, but it never filled what was a relationship.

The family and friends seemed distant only due to the lack of knowledge of how to relate unless it was a phony statement or an act to seek approval.

Then it was time to seek employment. I didn’t really want to work, but I enjoyed buying records and guitars and eating out, so I had to do more than steal a few bucks from my parents or mooch off friends, which meant I had to work.

To work means you have to join the team. The team at this point controlled your requirements to achieve monetary rewards for staying and complying with demands at a certain location at a certain time. Everything against personal freedom, but you does what you do to take their money.

So the hair gets cut, the beard gets shaved, the button down collar shirts come out of the closet, and I suck up to whatever needs to be done to fit in.

Weekends offer a release from a structured society to the freedom within my room or apartment or coffee shop or wherever the pressure is off.

And how does that relate to me now?

I think I learned to be myself in my room. The same is true today.

Relationships, while briefly pleasurable become too complicated with extended families of strangers and unrecognizable personalities and disparaging agreements to preferred art and music.

And yes, I can be a companion. Shoot, I’ve been married most of my life so I seem to be able to get along with another for better or worst in sickness and in health and all that, but I must maintain my own personal space.

Listen to the Beach Boy’s “In My Room” and try to understand, being a “loner” isn’t a bad or even an unusual way of life.

It just means one may get along better with one’s self due to whatever reasons than to be around others all the time.

"In My Room"

There's a world where I can go and tell my secrets to
In my room, in my room
In this world I lock out all my worries and my fears
In my room, in my room

Do my dreaming and my scheming
Lie awake and pray
Do my crying and my sighing
Laugh at yesterday

Now it's dark and I'm alone
But I won't be afraid
In my room, in my room
In my room, in my room
In my room, in my room