Putting the "I" in Id...

So it happens like this: they give you at least 100 multiple choice questions. You stare at row after row of ovals, remembering high-school aptitude tests, and try (like always!) to find the right answer. Should you represent your best self, or your worst? Which is real? Do you know? Does anyone know? Is it possible that all this while, you didn't really know yourself? Is it conceivable that a functioning adult can be so thoroughly and sytematically misunderstood?

Maybe it's not this angst-ridden for everyone, but I find personality tests to be both tedious and misleading. For one thing, I was (I know this sounds arrogant but I'll say it anyway) too smart for them (or at least, for the Myers-Briggs I used to take). I know I manipulated my results, because I went through an INFP phase, an ENTJ phase, an ENFJ phase, etc. Why? INFP's are sensitive artists, ENTJ's are astronauts and inventors, ENTJ's are presidents and CEO's. I don't think a person's personality changes depending on her career goals, or on what her friends are at the time. Bubble skirts, skinny jeans, neurotransmitter structure...some things can be blamed on the times, others can't.

I always shied away from the label "introvert" because I thought of introverts as modern misanthropes, living in cabins in the (fast disappearing!) forests and nursing lame grudges against the world. The nasty neighbor who chased kids off his lawn on Halloween? Introvert. That stringy-haired high-schooler who thought SIMS domination meant world domination? Introvert. That 50-year-old guy who boarded up his windows after his wife left him for a Chippendale? Introvert! Introvert = outcast, a 21st century Van Gogh, cutting off his ear and giving it to a prostitute in a poorly calculated gesture of affection. And while Van Gogh's paintings are worth millions today, at the time he was a lone wolf, a silent revolutionary, a man who lived in his parents' attic and gave off the funk of disillusionment.

What I'm getting at, with all these wordy allusions, is that I thought to be introverted meant to be alone, and more importantly, lonely. So of course, having been lonely (cue slow song from any chick flick ever made) I thought, this sucks. Why do it on purpose? But I've been wrong all along (this being the part in said flick where the boy runs after the girl's departing airplane/convertible/llama). I'm so sorry, introverted self! I messed up when I rejected you! I want you back! Introversion has nothing to do with loneliness, lifestyle or career. Most introverts love people, they just don't love all of them. They just don't get that sudden bloom of energy from shaking a hand they've never shook before. To be honest, I'm not sure I get it anymore either, and that worries me, because (the hero curses his own stupidity while the heroine listens with sympathy) I never realized I could change. But maybe it's true. Our needs change, our personality evolves, the child becomes the parent and the Myers-Briggs totters from E to a shocking but unmistakable I.

Is it possible that all this while I just never really knew? (The hero and heroine ride off into the introverted sunset, which in fact looks like a sunrise...or am I just kissing the dictionary's ass at this point?)