Blog

The Josephine Ulrick Literature and Poetry prizes offer an eye-popping $20,000 to the winner in each category. Now in its tenth year, this is the first time the twenty grand prize pool has been awa...  >

Elsewhere
Ultimate Guide to Writing Better Than You Normally Do >

Other

< Back to Blog
0 Comments

Shy Young Thing

Sian Prior August 06

Shyness is an emotion that is often overlooked, but at some time or another, we all feel it. From a fleeting moment of embarrassment to an entire lifetime crippling doubt, we can all be introverts. In the June edition of Meanjin, Sian Prior struggles to understand what it really means to be shy and what kind of pressures this can put on our professional and personal lives. A brief extract is below, and you can read the full essay on our editions page.

Prior will also be a guest at this weekend’s Byron Bay Writers’ Festival, where she will speak with Sophie Cunningham on shyness as part of the CAL/Meanjin lecture. For full details, see our Noticeboard.



I’m standing on the fringes of a room full of strangers and a familiar sensation is seeping through my body. It’s as if someone has snuck up behind me and spiked my drink, so that instead of a glass of mineral water, I’m now sipping a kind of sparkling, liquid concrete. My limbs are growing rigid, my neck is seizing up and my smile is turning into one of those insane grins on the faces of young ballet dancers whose point shoes are actually killing them.

It’s 7.45 on a Saturday night in winter. My fella’s football team won by twenty-six points, he’s had a couple of beers and a whisky somewhere between the MCG and the birthday party, and now I can’t find him in the crowd. I’m over forty but feeling about fourteen, and I’m sidling towards the door. The car needs to be moved, I tell myself. An hour won’t be long enough, there must be a better park somewhere close by. (Or far away. At home, perhaps.) Anyway, I’ll just go and move it, shall I?

My movements have suddenly become as fluid as a cat after a bird. Putting down my glass of fizzy concrete, I take three steps and I’m out the door and free and moving fast now, so fast it must look suspicious but I can see the car and I’m pressing the blue button on the key ring and the headlights are flashing and I’ve got hold of the handle and now I’m inside the car and alone and safe.

If it wasn’t so ridiculous, I’d be laughing out loud. What’s a polite, nearly middle-aged woman like me doing leaving a party without even saying goodbye to her fella, let alone to the birthday girl?

Regressing, that’s what. Behaving like she used to before she became A Confident Career Woman. Like she did in the bad old days, when she was A Shy Young Thing...

Update: here's Ivor Indyk on Shyness


 

Our Friends


 

Only the comment field is required. Omitting the ID fields increases your risk of being mistaken for spam.