I RELISH BEING A LOCKDOWN HERMIT
DEAR BEL,
I was an only child and both parents loved me, but I was always close to my mother. She’d lost her previous child, so was glad when I came to answer her prayers.
As a teenager, I couldn’t fit in and after university continued living with my parents. When my father died, I stayed at home. I also realised I was gay and in those days it was another world.
Eventually, I got a permanent post and started a long-distance relationship with a man I met through online dating. My feelings for him are more platonic, but he gives me a sense of security.
In 2018 my mother was diagnosed with dementia, and I cared for her until she died in November 2019. Looking after her gave me direction. Now I’m totally unmotivated; my house is cluttered; I tidy then it ends up the same.
With lockdown I realised I wasn’t missing real-life contact. I love live chat online — I’m more relaxed. The truth is, lockdown was a blessing. I love quiet roads and not having noisy kids pass my house. I also relish everyone else being in the same plight as me, inside.
I’m worried at the prospect of normality returning. I shall paradoxically feel more isolated.
I’m supposed to be going on holiday with my partner later this year but feel anxious, not having been on public transport since last March. I’m guilty that I feel like this when lockdown has been so dreadful for so many. As I am in my 60s, can I change, or do I have to accept my odd personality?
THIS strange, modern world seems to be reducing us all to sameness. Like blue denim, we’re all expected to don the same thoughts — uniformity being the ‘consensus’.
Sociability is seen as desirable — for who wants to be mistrusted as a ‘loner’? I’ve lost track of the ‘syndromes’ that shrinks come up with to describe ordinary conditions such as sadness and anxiety.
What if there’s nothing really wrong with you at all? Indeed, you might be far wiser than those whose hearts sink at party small talk but can’t say no to going out. You aren’t the only one who has found relief and peace during the lockdowns, and I suspect your anxiety about public transport is shared by many.
Your uncut letter says you never missed siblings and loved playing with local children in your wonderful imaginary world. Not everybody needs people.
Of course I could start an encouraging chorus, suggesting therapy and self-help books, etc.
But what if you are simply yourself: an unusual person who loves drawing the curtains on winter nights and keeping the world at bay? I don’t find that ‘weird’.
If you’re feeling more anxious than usual it’s because long restriction has broken our habits and so ‘normality’ becomes hard.
In the meantime, it really will make you feel better to start a project: pack your mother’s clothes into bags for when charity shops open, and make a list to tell you which room to tackle each day.
The key question is whether your chosen lifestyle makes you unhappy. If it doesn’t, then why beat yourself up for being different?