Quarantine with family is a slow death of the soul for introverts.
I love my husband. I love my kids. I am exhausted.
I’m home alone for the first time in a long time. Post-lockdown mid-pandemic social distancing protocols with three teenagers and a husband means there’s almost always at least one person in this house with me. You might think a house with 3,000 square feet is enough space to allow one or two people in here and still have a nice sense of aloneness. You’d be wrong.
Yes, I know that’s the voice of privilege; yes, I know there are families of five quarantining in one bedroom apartments with no income and no food. I am privileged, and I am struggling. These two things are not mutually exclusive.
I was cocooned in solitude all day; for an introvert it was decadence.
In February, and for the five years preceding, I spent my days at home alone working my dream job while telecommuting. Kids in school, spouse working at an office. I was cocooned in solitude all day; for an introvert it was decadence. But then March arrived. My husband’s employer switched to remote work, the kids’ schools changed to remote learning, and four people inundated my daily sanctuary of isolation. Four people rotating through the kitchen next to my office. Four people popping into my office to see what I’m up to. Four people asking questions that, honestly, they could have answered themself. (Why are you asking me if we have sliced ham when you had to leave the kitchen to ask?)
Nothing recharges mental and emotional batteries faster than other humans drain them. No amount of sleep or wine or locking myself in my bedroom — not even walking this fucking neighborhood for the 354th time.
- Take a hot bath: +30% to battery.
- Listen to kids bicker for 8 minutes about who didn’t close the chips: -8%.
- Ask a kid for the 5th time to unload the dishwasher: -5%.
- Ask a kid to take a shower for the 11th time: -11%.
- Pick up socks for the 4th day in a row or ask the sock-owner to pick up their socks for the 8th time: -4% to -8%.
- Energy spent deciding which way to approach parenting through that moment: -8%.
Even now as schools re-open with convoluted plans to manage educating 1,000 teenagers while maintaining masks, hygiene, and social distance, there’s no reprieve. High schools are hybrid learning models — half at home, half on campus — and the strain of having the kids constantly home is exchanged for the part-time burden of driving to and from campus (-5%, twice a day). Of course, none of the kids have an identical schedule. Popping in to see what I’m up to is exchanged for Zoom troubleshooting (-8%) and internet connectivity issues (-4%).
I wonder how effectively anti-masker parents have indoctrinated their kids to defy basic courtesies and dress codes (-1% per hour on-campus hour per child). How diligently teachers will enforce regulations that keep my kids safe. It took less than two weeks for the first message to arrive from one school about COVID exposure and certain individuals requiring quarantine (double the on-campus hourly battery drain for the rest of the semester).
We have a family betting pool on how long before the schools return to remote-only learning. It’s posted in the hallway, a constant reminder that any semblance of normalcy for me is still a pinprick of feeble light on a far distant horizon.
When I slump to bed, battery highlighted red, I know I’m just as likely to wake up to 19% charge as not to have slept. Why recharge with sleep when you can lie awake too tired to sleep? I stay up past when the kids go to sleep trying to capture a few breaths of stillness. It works until one of the kids decides 10:30pm is the perfect time to divest themselves of whatever has been percolating in their heart (-10% for every minute unrestrained emotional upheaval).
All energy for life-giving, soul-elevating writing and photography is depleted. I am wander through my days a husk of the woman I was before COVID. My bones are tired and I just want to be alone.
