You’re standing in a room full of people, but you can’t bring yourself to initiate a conversation with any of them. When someone comes up to you, you smile and try your best to make small talk. After a few minutes, you’ll excuse yourself to the bathroom.

Why are you even here? You hardly know anyone, but I mean, that’s kind of your fault in the first place. It’s just not even worth it anymore. Just go home. Nobody likes the quiet girl anyway.

But you need to make friends. You can’t just spend all your free time alone. You should try to make dinner plans with someone tomorrow night. Yeah, that sounds like a great idea. Except once you really think about it, you brush it off. Making friends is exhausting.

You want to spend your free time alone.

Going to Starbucks by yourself is something you look forward to. You don’t like studying in groups. You’re that one annoying kid who always has the entire table to themselves at the library. You always workout alone. You walk to class alone. You’re always alone. And you enjoy it.

However, as much as you enjoy it, you also hate it at the same exact time. You hate being the quiet girl.

You wish that making friends was easy. You wish you could walk into that room full of people and talk to every single person. You hate that you can be so shy in social situations. You’re so used to being your own best friend that you forget how to let others become one.

It’s a constant battle between craving solitude and escaping it, and trust me, it is the most frustrating thing in the world.

I am an introvert who wishes more than anything that she could be extroverted.

Let me tell you my story. I used to be a social butterfly as a kid. In fact, I used to be the class clown. Making friends was something I never had to force — it just happened. Up until my freshman year of high school, I had a group of friends that did everything together. We always hung out with each other, we always called each other, we always laughed together. Everything was perfect.

But sometimes girls can be mean, and sometimes you end up not trusting them anymore. After my freshman year, I stopped trying to actively befriend people. Was I just going to be stabbed in the back again? Most likely.

I had myself. At the time, it seemed like I was the only person I needed. Being an only child obviously enforced this even further. It was a little lonely at times, but I was learning to be okay with it.

College came around, and I realized I didn’t want to be lonely anymore. I joined a sorority. I brought toffee on my move-in day to give to everyone on my floor (a little too much? Probably). I made an effort to go out with my roommate and try to get to know more people. I tried to be a different person — so much that I started going by “Kate” instead of “Katelyn.”

I wanted to make friends. I didn’t want to be that weird, shy girl anymore. However, the more I kept forcing myself to meet people, the more I started to fear rejection.

I realized I will always be the quiet girl, not because I wanted to be her, but because I was too anxious not to be.

It sucked.

However, if I learned anything over the last couple years it’s this: accept yourself for who you actually are, and the people that are meant to be in your life will follow.

As absolutely cheesy and cliche as that sounds, please take it with a grain of salt. You will find people who will be patient with you. People who know that you are a little shy, but still make the effort to show you they care. You will find people who see the good in you and will appreciate your personality as it is.

Once you meet these people, you will forget that you’re introverted. You’ll start to question why you ever tried to be extroverted in the first place. You don’t have to be.