You Thought I was a Hermit?

I am an introvert. It doesn't mean I am entirely shy or retiring, or that I somehow lack social confidence. It means that in order to function, to replenish the stores of my soul, I need solitude to process the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. I need to write long-winded blog posts and journal entries. I need to run away into the woods, to be where other people are not.

I have chosen to live in a place, and in a manner that is inherently highly social. From banter in the store and at the landing, to a culture of game nights, community volleyball, and pot lucks- my days are packed with human interaction. I've come to an island where anonymity is not an option, and while secrets may fester for years, they will surface. And the effects will spread. Because- to some extent- we all work together, play together, fight and grieve together, there is no escaping the joy or the pain that comes down the pike.

In the course of a week I will literally babysit my students, and stage their spring concert; swap baked goods and jokes, pour coffee, explain the new library system; I will cuddle kittens and pitch kitten-ownership to any likely taker; I will take a woman abused (who has had enough) to see a lawyer, and then play volleyball wildly well with her abuser- who I'd loved like a brother; I will hold the hand of their young son when he slips his in mine, and I will also give him five minutes in at recess when he is being a little shit; I'll welcome back the snowbirds, listen to the talk of a lobstering conservation zone; I'll gratefully confide in and seek counsel from a minister; I'll open up my house to builders, and then ready it for the owner's visit, and show it to a new potential occupant- I will eat, drink, laugh, weep, speak in coded language that would put Chekovian subtext to shame. I will keep secrets, but work with determination for their release...

These are the bizarre and varied things I am actually good at. And before my fragile little human mind cracks from the speed of the spinning, I stop the world. I lay in the sun with a book, I dive in the thoroughfare, I run away to the island's interior. Island time, and autonomy, I think, is the upshot of this intense interaction.

This blog is a constant exercise in the elucidation of what this life means to me, or what it is that I am deriving from the island that keeps me here- and I think the best answer is simply that it demands I just be unapologetically human. I may need to have time to myself, but there is no hiding from the infinite complexity of my friends and neighbors. I am learning (to borrow from that much more regionally famous island author, Elisabeth Ogilvie), how vast are the demands (infinite), and how wide the heart (infinity-plus-one).