INFJ.

I feel like any comments about one's personality test should be prefaced by "yes, I know, personality tests are not the end all be all." I'm totally okay with this - it's unreasonable to expect that the billions of unique people on this planet can be oversimplified into a few letters. Since I was younger, though, I have loved delving into personality tests. We love anything that gives us an opportunity to understand ourselves better.

I know that personally, I am not exempt from this category - I was that kid that never felt like they "fit" in anywhere. I preferred to have one or two close friends, which I have always been totally content with.  Trying to keep up with several friendships is draining to me. I didn't like small talk - I have always preferred deep conversations about faith, politics, books or philosophy. I'm quiet. I'm slow to get to know people. I enjoy social events, but I don't like to stay at them long - they drain me, and I prefer to sit in the corner at them and find someone to have a conversation with. I like to have long drives alone to think and listen to music. I like to have thoughts in the form of ongoing dialogue in my head - and frequently stare off into space, just thinking. There's only a handful of people I feel as though I can be myself around. I'm extremely private - I'm very hesitant to open up about my private life and share information. It doesn't mean I don't like someone if I don't share with them - I love to listen to other people's stories and life details, but I can only open up on my own time, when I'm ready, and there's only a few people I have been able to do that for. I feel like I've lived almost my whole life in this little bubble of isolation, and it's not just a matter of just learning to be extroverted - it's not that simple. It's just a fact of life for me.

As a result, my introvertedness and extreme privacy meant that I wasn't ever the popular kid - a fact that I've known and voiced since second grade. Second grade me was a little sad about this, but had no idea what to do about it - I think she realized it was useless to try and fit herself into a round peg when she was obviously a square, unable to change the person she was. So, instead I learned that I didn't want to be that person. I liked people - I wished I could connect with them more - instead, I found a couple people I could connect with, and spent the years teaching myself to be content with the fact that I have to work with the personality type I was given.  I was nerdy, I would read at sleepovers (and any time, really), and I liked to follow the rules. Me trying to fit into popular social constructs made me end up feeling like I was an actress who was on stage and suddenly couldn't remember her lines. Frankly, I feel that I'm kind of weird. I've struggled with communication and self confidence for a lot of my life, and much of my college career has been spent attempting to improve these two qualities so as to make myself successful in my current and future work life. My personality makes me the type that is extremely satisfied by working for myself - I have worked for other people in the past, but I have always made children's entertainment my primary form of income, and it is the work thus far that has made me feel most fulfilled. I love the freedom of working for myself, booking events, savoring a hard days' work and mixing my creativity and love for people/happiness into my work while being able to build financial freedom for myself. I've always felt a little boxed in working for others. It's this same mindset that makes me feel relatively confident that I can be successful as a home health physical therapist. This isn't to say I'm only happy working for myself, of course. I value purpose and meaningfulness: I can find meaningfulness in anything that helps people in some way, and truly, I have been able to rationalize all of my current and past jobs into fields that have been meaningful, and thus fulfilling, to me in some way.

Despite learning to be content with my God-given personality, my feeling of "weirdness" made me desperate for anything to explain why I was the way I was. I took the Myer's Brigg at the start of my sophomore year of college for class - and there was my personality, "summed" into four letters - INFJ.

My Myer's Brigg test obviously doesn't define me. But I was thankful for it, because it made me feel that I wasn't crazy to be the way I was. "The idealist," or "the advocate", my personality type claimed to be "rare", making up only 1 percent of the population. My mode of living is focused internally - that's extremely accurate. My internally focused life has always made it difficult for me to externally express myself. I have always had an easier time of expressing my thoughts on paper, and I love to write. The way I grow is by taking quiet time to reflect and jot down my thoughts. I've kept a journal since 2nd grade and it's been pivotal to my sanity, I think. When I was diagnosed with Diabetes, part of the reason why I took it so hard was because Diabetes, a chronic illness, seemed like yet another thing that made me feel personally isolated from the rest of humanity, or at least the 99% of people I didn't seem to click with. That's part of the reason why I started this blog - it's taken the place of my journals for the most part, because I wanted to have some window through which I could try to explain what life with a chronic disease is like. And it's a hard one, in many ways - because Diabetes is an invisible illness that makes it very easy to underestimate the grave psychological as well as physical impact it has on people who have it. This blog also became a challenge to me - trying to take my introverted self and express myself in front of other people.

I'm old enough now to understand that no matter what my attempts, I'm not going to just wake up one day, connect with everyone and become a social butterfly. I have learned to be more extroverted when I needed, but that's never going to really be me. It's taken me a long time to be okay with that, but this post isn't meant to solely be me griping about my inability to fit in and have effortless conversations. If there's anything that my (almost) 23 years have taught me, it is to be thankful for who I am. I'm thankful for my internal-focused life - it has helped me to delve into writing and art, it has pushed me to educate myself through literature and to strive for furthering my education. It has given me the opportunity to have had some great conversations with people and to build very meaningful, true and lasting friendships, and connect to those who I am friends with on a deeper level. It has helped me to be a dreamer who has the push to turn her dreams into action. It has prompted me to spend time focusing on the human experience and learn how to feel empathy. It has helped me build a very stable and positive emotional mindset, to pursue a well-balanced and healthy life, and it has encouraged me to be in constant reflection of myself, which has helped me to grow.

Any fellow INFJ's out there? Do you feel that your Myers-Brigg helps explain your personality type? I'd love to hear other people's thoughts!