I am a neurotic person. I am fastidious, meticulous, extremely sensitive, and easily stressed by chaos, disorder, and dirt. I wash my hands frequently and am constantly wiping down surfaces, even ones that appear clean. One of my dictionaries says that "neurotic" in non-technical use means "abnormally sensitive, obsessive, or anxious", and that describes me well. I have improved over the years, but I still occasionally get called "paranoid", "neurotic", "angsty", and an "over-thinker".
I am an extreme introvert, and rather misanthropic. Interacting with, hearing, or even being in the same room as, humans, drains my emotional energy reserves. My bubble of personal space is large: I do not like people to stand close to me unless I feel emotionally close to them, and the number of humans who meet that criterion is very small indeed. When strangers come too close to me I want to scream, and humans who touch me without asking my permission first make my skin crawl.
At the end of March, my country of residence entered a state known as Alert Level 4: a government-mandated lockdown in order to prevent the spread of the disease called COVID-19, which was (and still is, as I write this) causing a global pandemic. For one month, from late March to late April, all non-essential services were shut down, all gatherings were cancelled, and people were instructed to stay home, except for essential journeys to get food, medication, et cetera, and for local outdoor exercise. At all times, people were required to maintain a two-metre distance between themselves and anyone who was not living with them. Lengthy and frequent hand-washing was encouraged, and when visiting the supermarket every customer was required to use the supplied hand sanitiser and disinfecting wipes, and was instructed to wash their groceries after transporting them home.
Under Alert Level 4, for the first time in my life, I was legally required to live the hermitic existence my friendless child-self had always imagined I would.
It was bliss.
I didn't have to go anywhere. I didn't have to do anything. No one was going to knock on my door and expect me to answer. I didn't have to be available to anyone, speak to anyone, or achieve anything according to others' agenda. A slew of responsibilities and difficulties ceased, and tasks I was dreading simply became impossible to do, so I could stop worrying about them. I felt almost zero need for human interaction, with fleeting moments of exception when I missed my two most beloved humans. But they were only an e-mail or phone call away, after all.
I felt relieved and liberated as I have seldom felt before.
I was happier than I had been in a long time.
Many people in my life asked if I was all right and had everything I needed, which was kind of them, and I appreciated their concern. But when they asked if I was coping with the isolation, I had to bite my tongue and simply say that I was fine, in order to refrain from blurting, "Are you kidding? I'm having the time of my life! This is fantastic! I don't want it to end!".
I felt somewhat guilty for enjoying the lockdown. It wasn't that I was enjoying the pandemic itself; people were dying, incomes being lost, and elsewhere in the world, in countries with governments that were handling the pandemic badly, death tolls were horrific, healthcare systems overwhelmed, people in constant danger, and livelihoods being ruined. The pandemic was inflicting trauma across the globe, and the world would never be as it had been before COVID-19.
How could something so horrifying bring me peace, liberation, and relief?
What right did I have to feel like I was on holiday, when people everywhere were suffering or dying?
This article
on the psychology website psychcentral.com assured me that I am not the
only one who actually felt happier during the pandemic. But many other articles reported that even my fellow introverts were struggling with being quarantined — either because they were confined with others, often including extroverts and young children, or because they were realising that they still desired human company, perhaps more than they had thought.
As the country's time in Alert Level 4 drew to a close, I found myself wondering wistfully how I could continue to live as though under Level 4 restrictions. How could I make sure that all strangers stayed two metres away from me forever? How could I continue to preserve my solitude?
Once Alert Level 4 lifted and we returned to the lesser restrictions of Alert Level 3, I felt genuine sadness, and, within a few days, I was nostalgic for Level 4.
Why?
I realised that it was because, for the first time in my life, I had felt normal.
For once, everyone was living my life. Everyone was neurotic. Everyone was stressed and nervous and self-conscious. Everyone was washing their hands a lot and sanitising and wiping things down and refraining from touching surfaces. Everyone was avoiding physical contact, having conversations with two metres of space between interlocutors, giving others a wide berth, even crossing the street to avoid people. Everyone was anxious, even terrified, but still trying to be kind and courteous in the midst of their stress.
I have always been a freak. For a host of reasons, I have always felt that I do not belong with
humans, that I am strange and unacceptable to them. I am, more or less,
at peace with this, and believe that normality and conventionality are overrated anyway.
But for four weeks, I was normal. For four weeks, I glimpsed what it must feel like to be a normal person: not an outcast, not a freak, nor a weirdo ... normal.
And now the restrictions have lifted. And I will, most likely, never feel normal again.
It is unlikely that there will be a second pandemic in my lifetime. That month of Alert Level 4 may well have been the only taste I will ever have of what it feels like to be "normal" — typical, conventional, ordinary, readily understood by the masses.
No wonder I feel nostalgic for it.
How unsuited am I to ordinary life if it takes a global pandemic for me to feel normal?
We have now moved to Alert Level 2. Things are returning to normal ... other people's version of normal.
Playgrounds are in use again. Shops are opening. Streets are once again full of cars and pedestrians. People speak cheerfully of how "things will soon be normal again."
And I feel a queasy sense of dread suffuse my being. I have never felt so misanthropic. I crave peace and silence and solitude as never before. I think longingly of caves in forests where hermits may live undisturbed, and sealed towers where princesses dwell alone, and inaccessible mountaintops.
I wonder what is wrong with me.
And I know, with guilt and unease, that no one to whom I might try to explain this feeling would understand it. Not even my two most beloved humans.
All my life, I wanted close friends. As a child, I had no real human
friends. Nowadays I have a handful of wonderful friends, and I enjoy
their company; I spend more time socialising than ever before. But
it would seem that I had not realised how much this socialising was
draining me.
Clearly I am every bit the hermit that I've always believed I was, and
clearly although I love my friends and rejoice in their company, I also
love solitude. I need to find ways of having more of it. I need to be
pickier — extremely picky — finicky, even — about whom I allow to have
access to my company, and for how long.
I found this article helpful, and very validating: 7 Ways To Enjoy More Solitude In A Society That Demands You Be Social.
I have started scheduling "days off" for myself: days on which I go nowhere, see no one, only answer electronic communications if I feel like it, and do only what I am inclined to do. I am preparing myself for saying "no" to more people more often, and I practice phrases such as, "Let me get back to you about that", and, "I'll have to check my diary and let you know", both of which are stalling tactics to give me time to concoct a polite way of declining. I have started answering most text messages in a batch in the late afternoon, rather than as soon as I have a free moment.
I cannot replicate Alert Level 4 conditions for weeks at a time. But I can start taking my solitude more seriously.
I cannot make myself feel normal in a society that thinks I am a freak. But I can start treating my own "normal" with greater intention and enthusiasm, and giving less weight to the idea that I must say "yes" to others' "normal" at the expense of my own.
