I guess the best description of me in high school could be pulled from the INFJ personality profile:

“INFJs have a rich, vivid inner life, which they may be reluctant to share with those around them. […] [T]hey are guarded in expressing their own feelings, especially to new people, and so tend to establish close relationships slowly. INFJs tend to be easily hurt, though they may not reveal this except to their closest companions.”

I’ve always been very reserved — sometimes perceived as standoffish or uncaring — due to extreme emotional vulnerability. The people who most often recognized me behind my reserve (before I ever said a word to them) tended to be other introverts. The best (though not the only) example would be my friend Dee. She approached me softly and unexpectedly in gym freshman year and I felt an instinctive understanding with her. I saw some of my own shyness in her, but she’d reached out in her own quiet way and made it easy for me to feel safe. I believe she knew how to get past my reserve simply because she knew what it was like to be afraid of opening up.

It didn’t help with the reserved half of things, of course, that I lived most of high school in my own headspace. The line “rich, vivid inner life” is almost an understatement. I didn’t pay attention to people outside my immediate zone simply because most of my attention (when not focused on class or homework) was spent daydreaming, making up fantastic adventures inspired by my latest favorite movie or book or TV show. The real world (who was dating who, who broke up with who, who wasn’t talking to who) meant very little to me.

The effect was that, in high school, I didn’t pay much attention to anyone who didn’t put themselves right in front of me, but I maintained an ambivalent attitude toward most people. I wanted to get along with people, I even wanted to like everyone I met, but it didn’t matter if people ignored me because I was so busy with my own thoughts.

The only place I felt truly lonely was in choir. I hated choir. Not because it was awful, but because I had no one to talk to. I was happy when we were singing, which happened a lot less often than it should have, and I was happy when I thought of a comic to draw because then Andrew and Marc would read it and I’d get to have an actual conversation, but I hated choir because most of the time I was alone and bored.

I liked a boy in my choir class. I was friends with him by graduation, and I was over him soon after, but I liked him for a very straightforward reason — he was nice to everyone, even the unpopular kids. I’ve always liked nice guys. (Listen for the sound of my dad going “YAY!”) But this boy was also popular and thus always surrounded by people. And I don’t do the extrovert thing, where you’re comfortable talking to people in front of other people.

I also had a friendly acquaintance on the soprano side of the room, where she held court over the Christian kids. They all seemed very nice, and the soprano girl was even my ride to school for quite a while, but I just couldn’t make myself go be part of that group, mostly because I had serious trust issues with Christian youth groups after Shea and Emily. (Trust issues I mostly worked out in New Jersey — thanks, Melissa!) The other reason was that the soprano was also popular and always surrounded by people. And I still didn’t do crowds.

Aside from those four, there were a few altos and my microphone partner, all of whom would talk to me, but they tended to only talk when they felt like talking, and they usually had their own friends to talk to instead of me.

So, strictly speaking, I had no one I could just go up to and hang out with in choir. Outside of choir, I had a small, oddball, intelligent group of friends I could fall into step with and they wouldn’t look at me weird for it. In choir, I had several people who’d talk to me when they had a reason to. But the rest of the time, I was just… lonely.

I guess high school wasn’t too bad if choir was the worst part. I’m sure there are much worse things I could have faced, and God has blessed me with friends and family now so that I’ve never felt more emotionally secure in my life. (I’m even curing my stage fright by doing karaoke with my sister-in-law. My tendency to go quavery and flat when trying out for choir solos kept me frustrated and unfulfilled whenever one came along that I liked — another reason to hate choir — but working on curing it makes me feel like I’m exorcising a personal demon.)

All in all, I was pretty lucky in high school. My friends, even the ones I had in choir who could (and did) drive the lonely away every now and then, were amazing people. And living in my own headspace kept me from worrying about crap like social status or what others thought of me. I managed to avoid a lot of the nastiest parts of high school, simply due to personality and the luck of having such steady, honest people around me.

Yep. I could have done a lot worse.