Introvert at a party

I start out great. I'm excited to be there, to see people that I love and care about. I had spent all day mentally preparing myself for such a social environment. I have built up a deposit of social energy, and I am armed with it as I arrive.

This energy lasts for an hour or two. I am socially rambunctious, engaging, and outgoing. But every interaction with another human forces me to draw from my energy deposit. I can tell when my vault is getting low; so I scale it back. Maybe I take a seat. Maybe I move into another room. Maybe I converse with only one other human rather than many.

And then it runs out. I have no more social energy. So I stop interacting with the humans. I take a seat in an isolated part of the room.

And then the anxiety kicks in.

Everyone else is enjoying themselves and carrying on as I had been doing twenty minutes earlier. So no one sits with me. I start to think that something is wrong with me because no one wants to talk to me.

I pull out my phone and pretend that I'm attending to important business on my phone. Like checking emails. Or Facebook. Or Grindr.

Because I believe something is wrong with me, I lose the ability to muster up the courage to get back up. If anyone does sit with me and attempt to converse, my lack of energy drives them away. This reinforces my hypothesis that something is wrong with me. And so a negatively reinforcing cycle is born. I can tell hyperventilation will arrive within half an hour if nothing changes.

I have to get out of here.

Usually I just leave without saying goodbye to anyone. I don't want to be seen because saying goodbye requires social energy that I do not have. And yet, as I walk out the door, I wonder if they even noticed I left. But if they did notice, what are they saying about me?

I'm not sure which would be worse--if no one noticed that I left, or if they noticed and think that something is wrong with me.

I get home and go to bed. Was the evening a waste? Hard to say.