Gregarious Lonerism

I've already mentioned how my 'default position' would be one of 'loner-ism' but that didn't stop me having a number of great friends, many of whom I still value today, many years later.  It also didn't stop me being a 'lonely loner' at times.

My satisfaction with my own company was often read by others as aloofness.  In some respects I'm sure that it, in fact, was.  Did I think that I was better than them?  In honesty, I'm sure I did.  Did I yearn for their company and what they did?  Rarely.  Although the parties and nightclubbing were a source of fascination and, at times, jealousy, when I did get invited I'd more often than not start wanting to go home at around the 9 o'clock mark, having exhausted whatever real or feigned interest I might have had in those present.  And when a party did pass muster in my view it was usually one with four or five people present rather than forty or fifty ('that's not a party' I heard cry - I disagreed).

I was often described as gregarious and, indeed, a flirt.  When circumstances required it I was the life and the soul of the party, caring more about the enjoyment, satisfaction and entertainment of others than for myself.  That doesn't mean that  I didn't, in fact, crave solitude and my own company simultaneously.  That doesn't mean that I didn't find the effort exhausting.  And that doesn't mean that I didn't (and don't) find the lack of other people caring about my happiness or satisfaction irritating.

To my friends, my bouts of lonerism and, indeed, aloofness was equally baffling.  At the time of various school trips, when a group of friends was well established by then, my propensity to (rather dangerously, perhaps) go on excursions entirely alone must have been strange.  And 'Don't complain that no-one cares about you when you don't tell us when something's wrong' was an occasional complaint as well.
 
Drinking helped.  Indeed I started early.  Mum and Dad were enlightened in that respect - working on the basis, I'm sure, of preferring to have youthful inebriation conducted in the safety of one's home rather than at the bustop at the end of the road.  I'd always, however, be the first to return to the bar (needing more to drink and/or having had a conversation reach its natural conclusion).  I'd always find myself exhausted after a particularly gregarious night - a combination of 'putting out' and being, of course, hung over.

What a sight we must have been though - an enormous gaggle of 17 year-olds, lying in the garden of the local pub - all as p***ed as each other.  One thinks that it's only today that large social gatherings are successfully conducted - thanks to social media.  In those days we spent hours on the phone assembling the necessary masses.  Highly successfully.

Years and years later, an esteemed professional psychologist on meeting me for the first time said,

"You need to be constantly 'on' - charming, gregarious and cheerful - for your job"

"I bet you'd rather be enjoying your own company wouldn't you?"

How did he know?