Please Tell Me to Stay Home

It’s not that I am not afraid of this virus or what it would be like if I got sick—or if my husband with an underlying health condition got sick. It’s not that I don’t worr— in the back of my mind in a way that I pretend I’m not worried but I am—about what’s happened to our stock portfolio, the one we’re relying on for retirement, ideally sooner rather than later. It’s not that at times I don’t feel stymied at my inability to access simple things like topsoil to get my herb and veggie garden going. It’s not that I don’t mourn the trip I canceled in March to see a best girlfriend. Or that I’m not anticipating the sadness I’ll feel when I finally accept the fact that my annual family gathering with family at the beach is not likely to happen this year. It’s not that I don’t wonder when I’ll actually hug my mom again and smell her hairspray-powdery sweetness. Or my dad who was to be here at the end of the month.
It’s not that I don’t wonder if my 17 year old son will actually go to school in person next fall or if he will have anything resembling a normal senior year year. Or what he’ll do this summer. It’s not that I don’t feel clueless about how to help him plan his summer. Should we let him get a job? Enroll him in a summer school class?
It’s not that I don’t feel worried and concerned for those people out there who are desperate for money, wondering how they’ll pay the rent or put food on the table. About the people who are working because they need to but exposing themselves to the danger of the virus because they don’t have a choice. It’s not that I don’t think about the essential workers on the front lines—medical, police, emergency—who also risk their health everyday. It’s not that I don’t wonder if our lives and world will ever look the same again.
And yet. This time of observing the guidelines of safer-at-home have been balm for my introverted soul. It’s not as if I didn’t know I was an introvert. I’ve been well aware of that fact since my childhood, even if at that point I didn’t have a name for it. I’d be playing happily at a friend’s house, all going well, only to be flooded with the feeling of I-want-to-go-home. NOW. I’d reach my being-together limit with an astonishing suddenness.
This still happens. I’ll be out doing errands and hit a wall. It’s the same feeling. I need to go home. NOW. The urge is overwhelming and undeniable.
Now I am home. All the time. And here’s the thing. I LIKE IT. No—the truth is—I LOVE it. After being mostly at home for 5 or 6 weeks, yesterday, I needed to take my son to a medical appointment. And you know what I thought? “Oh, no. Really? I have to leave home? "
It’s not until now I’ve realized how hard the introvert in me has worked, how often I’ve denied her the desire to not participate, to stay out of the world, to disengage. Even as that kid who wanted to go home, I had an awareness of the perceived oddness of loners, of people who step away from the world too much. I grew up in a family with lots of introverts so it wasn’t a family message but a societal one that taught me to be careful to manage my introversion lest I be cast as a weird, a homebody, recluse, or hermit, words people most often use with at least a little bit of judgement.
Ever since I can remember, I’ve had what I call the Sunday Night Feeling, the dread that creeps up on me as Sunday afternoon turns to evening and I and those around me prepare to go out into the world on Monday. What I want is to stay in my home, my little world with my family, holding everyone close, for just another day. I want to stay in my nest, only roaming as far as my feet will take me in my neighborhood. Even as a child who liked school, who had friends and was well liked, I shrank away from re-entry every Sunday.
Being quarantined, the Sunday Night Feeling is almost gone. I still have things that need doing on Monday, some of which I don’t look forward to so I still hope to hold onto the weekend on that account. But the need to leave home, to go places, to venture out; that is gone.
I’m not quite sure how to explain myself. I have friends, people I value very much. And family I love to see. It’s not that I’m not social. I do miss those people right now. I miss seeing them in the flesh. And yet there are so many things I don’t miss. Invitations to social events I don’t want to go to but have some odd response to. I don’t want to go but I don’t want to say no because I want to be included. Except I don’t. Errands I don’t want to run. A general running around out and about I’d mostly rather do without.
Somehow it feels easier to me to say no to online events I don’t want to participate in. People are offering so much online and often free these days. I appreciate that. And I find it overwhelming. I spent a lot of time deleting emails about things I don’t want to engage in. It feels like lots of noise to me. I understand why people move into cabins in the woods with no wifi. NO social noise.
Though I do look forward to more free movement in the world, there’s a big part of me that doesn’t want stay-at-home to go away. Because then the pressure from the world re-asserts itself on me to get back out there, mix it up, interact, strive, be somebody, engage. What I’m recognizing is just how much I don’t want to return to that world. How still I’d like to sit. How much slower I’d like to move. How much less I’d like to do. How much more I’d like to say “No.” How much I want to give to the one in me who wants to hold the world at bay. Now that I’ve had the gift of indulging her, there’s no going back.