Coming Out as an Introvert
“Are you nervous?”
“Terrified,” I replied.
We were sitting in the front row of the huge conference arena in Blackpool, UK. It was many years ago, and I was at the British National Union of Students conference. I was about to mount the podium and make a speech to an audience of several thousand delegates, most of who would be hostile.
“Just look at the front row, and imagine you are speaking to one of the delegates,” advised my student union colleague. “It always works for me.”
“No,” I explained. “It’s not the antagonism of the crowd that bothers me, I can handle that. It’s the after-debate party that terrifies me.”
And thus it was; my speech to the crowd went well, and much as I would have preferred to dart back to my hotel as soon as it was over, my duties as a student representative required mingling with other delegates. What we would now call networking. So, there I was, wine glass in hand, trembling at the thought of making small talk against the backdrop of clinking glasses and laughing revellers, who would become louder and drunker and the evening wore on. I knew that I would find conversation nearly impossible as I struggled to hear what was being said. My own long sentences would become progressively more difficult to express and the nuances of my voice would be trampled underfoot by the…
