The perfect way to decompress in an extrovert’s world.
Kate Henderson (she/they) // Crew Writer
Tin (they/them) // Illustrator
There’s something about temporarily losing those eight hours, five days a week with your classmates—many being close friends—that creates a social cavity. It’s weird how these designated social hours with others are something we can take for granted. Understandably so, of course, what with copious amounts of assignments practically drowning. We tend to get lost in that sea, every aspect of us being swept away from shore.
So, how do I start being me again? Making plans with friends, talking about ourselves, not the assignments that tormented us.
I always gravitate to beginning my recharge in bed. This quickly becomes boring, but your friend Anna went back to Vancouver Island, Ethan to Coquitlam, and you must be alone with this feeling before you find your next topic of conversation. So, you toss and you turn, and scroll, and turn, until someone comes to stoke the fire: a flight home to Calgary. This slow burn meets my mom driving 60 on a 100 km/hr Albertan highway, telling me about almost setting the house on fire with the muffins she made my sister. I get home and see them on the counter, there’s dog hair sticking out. All of this flame and extra fibre from the dog hair is whiplash from the yule-log style of bed rotting burnout I just survived for two weeks. This is it, the hard transition from social deprivation to social overstimulation.
There’s something radioactive about the social battery of a family of extroverts. Even after the socially deprived weeks of exam break, my mom’s story at the dinner table, my sister then interrupting to share her story, to my dad then interrupting her, feels like it’s a social snowball fight and I’m not entirely sure when to throw. Open the doors on Christmas Day, and this social snowball fight goes into full-blown extended-family snowball warfare, with the commanding officer being my grandpa with his offensive but strangely earnest comments. My grandpa is no homophobe or sexist, responsible for buying an OUT TV subscription on my dad’s credit card to watch RuPaul’s Drag Race, and talking to my cousin’s girlfriend about Dolly Parton for two hours at our last Christmas dinner; he is an ally who can read people to filth, telling me he would write me out of the will if I shaved my head like Eleven from Stranger Things at my eighth grade Christmas dinner. And so, our snowball fight ensues, and my arsenal is empty in this arena of extroverts.
I recover from the battle, with another (more fictional) battle, playing The Last of Us with my best friend, Livia and their mom, Jennifer. When I don’t know what conversational ball to throw at the Christmas dinner table, Livia is always ready to catch, and Jennifer passes them back. It’s this relationship between an extrovert (myself), introvert (Livia) and ambivert (Jennifer) that allows us to build our winter break snow fortress of recharge. Sometimes, we order the bacon alfredo pizza from Pizza 73 and sometimes, we get in Livia’s hot tub. But all the time, we do whatever together and talk about whatever together. As we settle into the snow, I recognize the soft feeling of being home. When I go to my house, I see how this snowball fight of conversation is overwhelming and it always has been. Still, it’s a game I don’t often play anymore, and its intensity is greatly sentimental. Each flash and phrase from my family comes from their joy of being together again, seeping with love.
So, when I wake up in Calgary, and my mom has left me a lemon water beside my bed (also with some dog hair), I know I’m going to go downstairs, and we will have a long conversation that will go off track a billion times. But most of all, I know that in all of this bombarding of storytelling, this time together, that I am loved.
When I wake up in Vancouver, I will see my empty coaster, but a soft care package of Christmas gifts and a text from my mom, and stories to tell my classmates, my friends and even stories to seep with love in film,
Also knowing that I am loved, and that I can seep love.