Among other things, going to the gym has become one of my safe havens in recent years. I say ‘recent,’ I’ve actually been engaging in this particular activity since the late 2010s, which I fear is far longer ago than my brain cares to pretend it is. Though that’s beside the point. It has remained a calming retreat of mine for the last eight years, which I doubt will change anytime soon. In addition to my local library and coffee shop, it’s one of those spaces where I can enjoy my own company, lose myself for an hour or so,  and renovate my body into a more desirable shape. 

Yet one thing I’ve noticed in recent times, is just how differently other gym-goers seem to be when it comes to interacting with this particular space. Whereas I’ll scuttle on in, plant my earbuds firmly into my skull and lift away without so much as asking another soul how their day has been, my fellow fitness companions often tend to be a lot more chatty with one another. Folks crack jokes with staff, enquire about one another’s days, and often give each other knowing winks as they exchange personal jokes. Perhaps they are friends outside the walls of this sweat place. Or maybe they wave to staff because they once took part in a personal training course led by them. 

Or perhaps it’s me.

I say this because I often find myself growing paranoid that I’m too much of a recluse. Or, at the very least, I struggle when it comes to reaching out to those around me. It’s not so much a case that I’m anti-social. I generally love being around people, plus I’ve always craved companionship and community for as long as I can remember. I forever do my best to be friendly and engaged when interacting with others. If someone says hello, I’ll always greet them back with a warm smile and a mutual greeting. Likewise, I make it mandatory to wish any shopkeeper or staff member who happens to be serving me a “good day” upon leaving their company. Except when I do, it always feels as though there’s an element of friction to the exchange. I find the entire situation quite a strain. Not because I don’t enjoy doing it, but because my anxiety skyrockets the moment I’m asked to leave my bubble of solitude and converse with those who share the world around me.

This feeling of strain and friction does feel like something of a recent development, although if we’re being frank, that may well simply be my brain tricking me. I will often take the sensations of my present, then tell myself it was never always this way; that there was a time where I could glide through life without a care in the world. The truth is though, if I peek at diary entries from eight years prior, or recall comments people made about my confidence (or lack thereof), I sense my timid and socially strained ways have been with me for quite some time.

I recall when I first joined my running club, all the way back in 2018. I tried striking up small talk with my fellow runners, yet those first couple of weeks were difficult. I didn’t know another soul there, and it was hard jumping in with all the in-jokes and knowing conversations. I felt like the sitcom character who would awkwardly shuffle up to a happy gaggle of companions laughing and joking, only to ask them what we were all laughing about. I felt out of place, and couldn’t quite figure out an in without seeming like I was intruding. Eventually I’d settle in and become one of the gang, but it took a while. But in those early days, I remember hearing folks occasionally approach me, saying things like ‘gosh, you’re quite a quiet one!’ or ‘you don’t speak much, do you!’ It was never meant with malice, but it never failed to sting the joy out of me. I would always feel a sense of shame and humiliation. It was as if a part of me has decided to associate being timid with ‘bad’ or ‘wrong.’ Which is always peculiar to me, because I’ve never felt that way about anyone else exhibiting a more silent stance in social settings. Yet when it comes to me, I hold a much different and more unfavourable opinion. I can’t help but consider my shyness to be a problem which must be resolved in order for everything to be okay in my world.

Perhaps this is why in the eight years of me attending my gym, I’ve never really made a friend there. I look around at a room full of strangers and assume that they probably dislike me by default. So I keep my head down, so afraid of how much of a fool I’ll make of myself if I try and even start so much as a conversation with them. I assume they hate me, so I try and hide from them. There’s a good chance it works. I keep my head down and they don’t notice me because I’m trying to go undetected, much like I do when I fall silent in a crowd full of newcomers. Or maybe they do see me, but they are picking up on my desire to stay invisible. For all I know, my timidness could be emitting a signal that tells others not to approach.  Perhaps my guard being up doesn’t just make it tough for me to speak to others, but it may well prevent them from approaching me in the first place. I suppose our thoughts influence our body language, then our body language influences whether or not others will approach me. If this is indeed the case, then my fear creates a partition between me and the wider world.

I don’t bring all of this up to fashion it into some sort of tragic fable. There are people across the globe grappling with similar bouts of shyness. I’m not sad over the fact that I haven’t cultivated a social circle out of the very space I pay money to keep fit within. After all, I never opted to join to make new friends, but to build muscle and maintain my cardio performance. None of this is me longing for an attempt to become everybody’s best mate at my local gym. Instead, I bring all of this up because despite my failure to connect and interact with people on a direct and personal level within this space, there does remain something fulfilling about me attending these spaces. Because despite the fact that I may not be striking up friendships, throwing around cheeky one-liners to amused staff members, or enquiring about my treadmill neighbour’s day, I do feel socially satisfied after spending an hour in the place. 

It’s almost as if a part of me is feeding off of the communication and community surrounding me. I don’t mean to imply that I’m eavesdropping. Far from it. What I’m getting at is, the simple act of simply being around people, even when I don’t know or have any friendship with them, makes me feel like I’ve taken part in something beyond my own life. 

The same occurs when I frequent libraries and coffee shops on weekends. In recent months, I have been making a habit of leaving my house during my days off and venturing up town, often just to do the things I tend to do at home, albeit in a more public space. Once there, I’ll read a book, enjoy a coffee, or work on whatever writing projects I have on the go, never really conversing with another soul beyond the barista or librarian. Beyond that, it’s just me, my beverage, my laptop and a book. The activities I engage in I could well have performed from the comfort of my sofa, yet instead I drag myself out and set up camp in a public space. And no matter what, I always come away feeling replenished and fulfilled, as if I’ve done something good for myself. It’s as though I have been with other people, even though it’s more a case that I have co-existed around them.  

As someone who is quite shy by nature, this feels like a peculiar compromise which I have devised for myself; a way to satisfy my need to be around others without starting up conversation with them. Socialising with strangers burns me out at such a rapid rate, yet there is a part of me that is quite extroverted by nature. I like being around people, even if I am often terrified of them.

When your social battery is prone to burnout, the urge to hide away in your home does become all too tempting. That certainly has been the case for me. Even to this day, I occasionally have fantasies about winning the lottery and retreating to a large house hidden away in a nearby woodland. In this fantasy, it would just be me, my home library and a self-assembled cinema built into my basement. I can bunker down and consume all the books and movies my heart desires. Yet as appealing as that might seem on the surface, I know it will turbocharge my path back to chronic depression. Within a matter of weeks, I’ll feel isolated, empty and desperate for company.

Operating in these spaces may have once seemed like an odd and daunting move for me to make, however these days, I consider them an absolute lifeline. Whilst there may be days when I wish I could chat with a stranger or engage with an unfamiliar group without feeling shame and panic whilst out and about, I love this barmy little compromise which I have have uncovered. I like being around others, even if my inner monologue likes to convince me that they all think I’m a rotten oddity who doesn’t deserve to share space with them. I want to feel connected to my community, even if I do feel as though there’s a veiled partition between us. 

I don’t know for certain whether this is the right answer I’ve been looking for, but in the here and now, it does feel somewhat sensible. For many years, I have been telling myself to solve the pain of being timid and socially clumsy. The urge to try and be more confident has overwhelmed me on many occasions. I have aspired to be comfortable ever since I grew into an awkward, anxious teenager who was riddled with self-loathing. I told myself if I read more books, observe confident folk during their daily activities, and tried to love myself, I’d be able to skip up to a stranger and enquire about their day without my heart missing so much as a single beat. In my head I had reasoned that ‘shyness was bad, whereas confidence was good.’ To be reserved was something that needed to be fixed. Yet the problem wasn’t that I was too quiet; it was the isolation that was the issue. I just needed a way to address the loneliness without having to aggressively rewire my personality. 

That self-appointed demand to change who I was has been causing me distress for the longest of times. Getting confident, becoming less stuttery with strangers, and trying to make everyone love me was a case of me setting myself unfair goals. Try as I might, I struggled to make them a reality. As I grow older, I’ve started to realise I can be ‘the quiet one’ and connect with others at the same time.  It wasn’t about changing how I functioned on the inside, it was about changing where I positoned myself on the outside.