introvert attention seeker
Lilla was the name of my blanket when I was a kid. It was a pink, soft, woolly blanket that I’ve been given as a present the day I was born. I was obsessed with it, literally couldn’t even go on holiday without it - until a very embarrassing age. Lilla was the friend every kid would want to have. An ally, always there for support and a soft cuddle, always down for every game I wanted to play.
Only problem: she wasn’t human. It’s not that I didn’t like people, don’t get me wrong, but I found social situations, like breaks at school or birthday parties, very uncomfortable. Oxford Languages defines SHY as ‘someone nervous or timid in the company of other people’ and they would have saved some time and ink by just putting a picture of that chubby little girl. I was never the first one to start a conversation, never the one introducing herself first. And though I’m an adult now, quite self-aware and mature, that tendency of gravitating towards the quietest corner of the room or hoping that strangers won’t talk to me before I had a drink, still inhabits my brain. On my worst days, I could spend a whole evening without pronouncing a word. Just nodding my head or saying easy, relatable things like ‘no way!’, ‘yeah, absolutely’ or ‘say it again?’.
Anyway, because I eventually managed to get rid of the childish habit of taking Lilla everywhere and call it my best friend, I thought that using it as my stage name could be a nice way to honour her and also keep my inner child alive. But ‘Lilla’ wasn’t long enough and, also, it’s always good to have some kind of surname too in your stage name - it just sounds better if you pretend someone is shouting it, say at The Grammys - so I thought that Shy would picture me best. Lilla Shy.
But how can you be so scared of entering a room full of people you’ve never seen before and, at the exact same time, imagining walking the hall of fame, singing songs on stages and posting videos on TikTok? Is it because humans are never straightforward and if we were all black or white life would be boring and I wouldn’t have topics to write my songs about otherwise? Might be.
I am an introvert attention seeker. I am scared of a phone call to the local Indian restaurant and love to sing intimate songs in front of strangers. I am scared to the bones to be judged and desperate to be seen. No one was ever judging me in those rooms though, but me. I’ve spent so much time trying to understand me to come up with the right formula to solve this inner contrast, seeing it as a problem to be fixed. Reading it back it’s actually quite fun. Nice to meet you, I am Lilla Shy.