1. Alone

You feel so alone when dealing with shyness. Everyone around you seems like an extrovert. You don’t see any truly shy people, because they’re invisible. Just like you. Hiding. Tucked away in corners. Trying to be inconspicuous. Unnoticeable. But feeling in themselves that they are lit up like a Christmas tree; drawing attention from everywhere. The heat..the glare from any lights hitting you like stage lights at the Old Vic. The centre of all attention, but alone. Totally alone.

We are always hearing people talk about how shy they were when younger. Especially celebrities. It’s become super duper trendy for people to say how shy and quiet they were when younger. Especially if they are seen as the opposite now. But in my experience, by far and away the majority of people don’t encounter crippling shyness at all. Casual shyness, as opposed to crippling shyness, is like the difference between being depressed and clinical depression. Few suffer from it, making that feeling of loneliness even stronger.

Everyone must surely experience shyness to some extent, in certain situations, but it’s more rare for it to be a big part of your life. So if you spend a period of your life hampered by severe shyness, as I was in my teens and early twenties, you most certainly feel alone. Alone and weird. Though as an adult, you learn to appreciate that 'weirdness'. The World would be a great place if everyone was just a little bit weird.

The feeling of loneliness that a shy person can get is a strange one, because, whilst feeling isolated and alone; on the outside looking in; ignored, uninteresting and unnoticed. Despite that, you also feel the opposite sensation; that everyone is looking at you. Staring at you. fascinated by you. Staring at you and not noticing you at the same time. Noticing every step you take, whilst at the same time not seeing you at all. It's an odd contradictory sensation that greets everyone who experiences heavy duty shyness. 

It’s the rest of the World and you. Although of course it isn’t. I make a point of telling myself what a wise old wizard once told me; that you yourself are the only person aware of your own inner doubts and insecurities. As you can’t read anyone else’s mind, you assume that the cool, calm exteriors of all those people that you see around you are mirrored by their internal situation. But we all have insecurities. Someone else looking at you would think that you were cool and calm inside, whilst they internally fight their own demons, unable to see anyone else’s inner strife. Even super cool movie celebs! You would be part of the crowd for them. Not a lone figure sticking out, as you believe yourself to be. But it’s super hard to tell yourself that. To convince yourself of that at the time. Like having the hallucination of spiders crawling on you, but telling yourself that it’s not real. Very difficult. 

So though you may be somewhat alone with the high level of shyness you suffer from, as far as internal strife and insecurities are concerned, you/we are most definitely not alone.