I am writing this from my office, my real office where I used to work with all my colleagues. We are still officially WFH but people have been dropping in here and there to water the plants and retrieve various things.
I live about 30 minutes away but the thought of a completely empty and quiet (and aggressively air-conditioned) office was too tempting. Sad as it sounds I’ve been looking forward to these hours all week. My dogs are at school today and my husband and I can go hours in the same house without seeing each other but I just needed to not be there for a little bit.
Alone time has been, for obvious reasons, impossible to come by. I love being alone. This is no shade to my husband at all! I just have always loved being by myself for stretches of time. I find it very restorative. I know that for people who have been mostly alone during the pandemic this might sound like malarkey but we all have some dumb shitty thing that we hate right now. This is mine.
If you ever watched Sex and the City you might remember the episode about SSB or “secret single behavior.” I am not single but I guess my version of Weird Shit I Do When No One Is Looking would include: talking aloud to myself, singing, eating a gross snack that I don’t want to explain to someone (exempli gratia, Ritz crackers with cream cheese), watching hacky murder shows like Forensic Files, and repeatedly French braiding my hair.
Earlier this week a colleague expressed concern that her kids – that all kids – will be awkward AF after all this time shut up at home. I sympathized, because last week I went to a Starbucks drive-through for the first time in at least four months, and when I pulled up to the window and the woman said “$7.50, please,” I just sat and stared at her for a minute.
There was a vague memory of something I should have been doing, some rote action I used to perform regularly and without thinking. In a flash it occurred to me that, yes, I have an app on my phone, I wave it at this lady here, the phone pays for my iced teas. “Sorry!” I said. “I just haven’t been anywhere in a while, I forgot everything!” We are all awkward AF, the kids aren’t going to be able to avoid it. I miss my alone time but there is probably such a thing as too much time at home, whoever else may be there with us.
When I was in the depths of Puppy Hell and my husband was still going to his office, I would go to dog school to pick up the bigger dog and just talk the staff’s ears off. I apologized to one woman because I became aware that I might, just possibly, maybe, sound at least a little bit insane. It doesn’t take much lack of interaction to really change your perception of what’s appropriate to disclose to the woman who works at the dog daycare, you know?
I would not say I am feeling especially great in general right now. I am acutely missing many aspects of Before Times. Having the house to myself, yes, and all the usual stuff we all miss. It is not so much the restrictions and the weirdness as this just…ongoing reckoning. Uncertainty has always been a given, but we knew what the world looked like. Now we are in uncharted territory, and the people meant to be steering the ship have no interest in navigating. No one has a map, or seems to want to draw one. We’re all in the same dumb position, but it feels lonely somehow.
“Everything is temporary” is a thing I tell myself a lot these days. It helps? Question mark? I had a burst of optimism yesterday and finally ordered a few small things to finish decorating our second guest room. Once the shopping endorphins subsided I had to laugh at myself. Who in blue blazes will be coming to stay with us anytime soon?
Maybe I will sleep up there one night and pretend I am on a business trip, another remnant of Before Times that I am inexplicably nostalgic for lately. Nostalgic for economy class flights and a mid-priced road warrior hotel! No thank you! Maybe it’s just the heat madness talking.