a not so social butterfly
what's wrong with being a hermit?
yes—i’m about to contradict most of what i said in my last post, what’s new?
☉15° Cancer | 39.6 | 07-06-25
☿ 10° Leo
an annoying thing i’ve discovered since i started deconditioning is that i’m not as cool as i thought i was.
or, i guess i should say, i’m not as cool as i thought i would be. i’d quietly suspected that all the layers of fear and anxiety and masking were hiding a radically different human than the one i was used to being. turns out, i’m still me; so much has changed and yet not much has changed at all.
when i was younger, i needed to know all the details of a social event before i would attend: who was going? when was the “start time” and when were people actually arriving? when should i arrive? how long would it last? what were people wearing? etc. etc. (can you imagine being my friend lmao)
i also never really felt comfortable while at these events. i never knew what to do with myself or where i fit into the social fabric. things like work or school were much easier—i knew exactly what my role was, where i was supposed to be, and who i should probably talk to. but unstructured social activities? mingling? count me the fuck out.
from the time i started therapy, i believed that if i worked on myself diligently enough, i would grow out of this nagging aversion to socializing. i thought that the anxiety would fall away and i’d transform into the social butterfly that i was always meant to be.
but here i am, more than a decade later, and whaddya know? i’m a butterfly who likes to stay at home.
this isn’t to say that things aren’t different now. they just aren’t different in the way i’d secretly been hoping for.
now, i don’t need every last detail of a social event before i go, but i do still find it comforting. i like to know who will be there and when i can expect to leave. i like to drive myself so that i don’t get held hostage by an inevitably more social chauffeur (nobody ever means it when they say that they’re “leaving after two drinks”). and i still don’t enjoy parties for which i am not in charge of the invite list. i prefer to be at home, or in a comparably familiar setting, with only the people i have deemed safe and their trusted plus-ones.
it turns out that the difference between twenty-seven and fourteen-year-old me is that now when i go to parties, i sit in corners by myself with a regulated nervous system instead of a completely blown out one. my preferences are the same, i’m just not having a meltdown about them anymore.
on one hand, this is quite the bummer.
i’d always longed for a sprawling network of friends, always wanted to be able to enjoy myself in a loud room crowded with strangers and casual acquaintances. to discover that, regardless of how much self-work and healing i do, i will never be that person and that will never be my scene has left me mourning. the person i thought i was deep, deep down wasn’t hidden; they were a fantasy.
on the other hand, this is liberating.
it’s…nice? to find out that i’m a socially awkward weirdo by nature. it was never a character flaw or a manifestation of childhood trauma—it was just me being me.
this is one of the several instances i’ve had recently of realizing that i can’t “heal” myself so much that i become a different person. many things that i thought were broken, i only thought because society had said so. (if you like to be alone instead of with people, you’re antisocial. if you don’t know how to—or just don’t enjoy—striking up surface level conversations with people you barely know and/or will never speak to again, you’re cold. if you prefer to hang out at home, you’re boring.)
but if i take away the societal stigma, then i love being a self-sufficient homebody who reaches out to friends when they feel like it and reserves their energy for people with whom they connect deeply.1
learning about my human design has helped immensely with my self-acceptance: as a Manifestor with Caves environment, more 1 Lines than i can count, and Gates 12 and 40 taking prominent places in my design, i am meant to crave a lot of alone time. i can relax into my natural inclinations confident and guilt-free.
so, what’s the point of all this?
i guess i just wanted to share that we don’t always find what we expect underneath our layers of conditioning. sometimes, all we find is exactly who we’ve been, and the only thing needing an upgrade was our ability to love, accept, and honor that person.
the end. thanks for listening <3
from earth, with love
xoxo Lizzie
P.S. substack is better on the web!
you might be thinking, “Lizzie, it sounds like you just enjoy being autistic.” wrong. one of the most reality-warping revelations i’ve had in the last three years was that i’m the least social person i know, even amongst my fellow autists. every autistic person i know is actually dumbfoundingly social. (wtf, guys? i thought we were in this together?!?)