Category: solitude

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The Hermit

In our Skype session on Thursday, my therapist commented that I seem much more relaxed and comfortable than when we used to meet in her office. Then, apparently, I was always fretting about my phone, or my keys, or something, always apologising for being two minutes late. Maybe so, but it’s not just that. Our first couple of Skype sessions were pretty stressful too.

This life suits me. Sometimes I just slip into quietness – in a good way, a happy, here-and-now way, a ‘mindful’ way, I guess. Well, it could be just tiredness, but even then it’s a healthy, dozy, peaceful sleepiness, not a mind-buzzing agitated fatigue.

I told her about the worst thing that happened in the week – the encounter with the checkout lady in the Co-op – and realised then that she was the only actual real world person I had encountered since our session the week before. I explained that it’s being with other people that bothers me, though I felt ashamed to admit it.

‘Why do you think that’s shameful?’ she asked.

I blustered a bit.

‘Well, it’s not good to be… misanthropic, is it?’ (though I realised as I said it that’s not a good word, I don’t exactly hate other people in general, I’m just not comfortable about interacting with them) ‘…it’s not right… it’s… inhuman!’

‘Why do you think it’s inhuman?’

Because good people like other people and like being with people. Don’t they? Isn’t that what makes us human?

Well… sometimes I like being with people. What about all those happy pictures I post of myself with friends and family? Ahh, but you can never judge anyone’s mood, personality or attractiveness by looking at the pics they post on social media. Not mine, anyway. Obviously, I only share the ones where I’m looking vaguely human, which gives a completely distorted image of what I see when I look in the mirror.

Now I’ve allowed myself to be distracted from what I was going to say, which is – for example, take the May Day gathering I mentioned yesterday, I enjoyed that – but I can guarantee that I was apprehensive beforehand. Being with other people is always stressful for me, however well I know them, it’s an ordeal because I’m on eggshells in case I do or say something stupid, like taking the wheeled basket-holder in the supermarket, when I should have asked for a normal basket. But I used to work at a regular job, how did I manage then? Because most of the time I got away with it. – but I still felt that sense of dread every day.

I think I’ve tapped into something very deep here, something that goes way beyond introverted vs extroverted. It’s hard to admit, because it does sound quite bizarre, but it explains a lot.

And as my therapist pointed out, in spite of all that, I’m prepared to share this here, with anyone who bothers to read it – perhaps because I don’t really believe anyone will.

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Day 29 – Paper Flowers

Wrote this yesterday evening. Spent most of the morning clearing a space on the table from my previous papercrafting projects.

May or may not be finished today – don’t hold your breath!

Tomorrow I will make a paper sunflower.
I have the stamps, the dies,
the coloured paper.
A small act of creation
with glue and pencils, paper, ink
a little effort.

It may not be
a thing of beauty.
Just a pleasant way
to spend the time.
But there are worse things
I could do.

Linda Rushby 29 April 2020
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Day 17 – Sonnet for An Introvert

Having already trashed the terza rima, I thought today I’d go for another classic poetic form – the sonnet.

Apologies for the longer final couplet, which I found written (as four lines) in my notebook, scribbled there a few nights ago and promptly forgotten by morning, when I wrote something completely different.

I could have used it another day, but I think it sort of fits (and saves me having to think up another two lines to finish with).

If I can write a poem today.
perhaps the world will go away
and leave me in this happy place
of never meeting face-to-face.

I burrow like a worm or mole
and hide inside this cosy hole
while listening to the radio,
relieved I’ve nowhere else to go.

I do the things I like to do,
and never go and join a queue
(not even one two metres spread)
I buy my milk first thing instead.

Life feels strangely normal – or perhaps it’s normally strange?
That same old déjà vu, coming around again.

Linda Rushby 17 April 2020

PS Just thought I’d add Miko as my ‘featured image’, given that this reflects her philosophy on life as well as mine.

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Passing Time

I was standing in the street in my dressing gown, it was 10.45 and I wondered how come I had slept in so late.

Then I was in bed looking at the clock, and it was 5.17, and I realised I had been dreaming. I was reassured, because that made so much more sense.

Thinking of what to write every day is difficult (except when it isn’t, when it just pops up) but the writing itself is easy.

The days go by so fast, even though I do hardly anything, one day after another, hard to tell the difference. The longer it stays like this, the less I feel inclined to interact with people. Life is so much easier this way. I think it will be a shock when external things start up again. I’ll have to make decisions then, do I make myself go out or do I carry on as I have been doing?

Over the last couple of years, people have said to me: ‘You do such a lot!’ and I’ve thought: no, I don’t, not really. When I listed all the external things I did each day: Monday: swimming, writers, yoga; Tuesday: tai chi; Wednesday: coffee (sometimes) etc etc it might sound like a lot, but it was just me, making myself go out, trying to make myself be sociable because I thought that was what I needed. But I wasn’t DOING anything – I would meet ‘the writers’ in the library, but I would never actually write anything. Now I am staying home and writing, but still I’m not actually writing ‘anything’, just spewing out words. Passing time, revelling in the dullness and emptiness of my life. Sometimes crocheting or weaving, but not to make anything – I’ve unravelled this latest cardigan so many times that by the time it’s finished I’ll probably have made it twice, then it will just go in the wardrobe and I’ll never wear it. The weaving and the weather blanket, both completely pointless (though I’ve promised this year’s weather blanket to my daughter, and I gave last year’s to my son). But the point is in the process of the making – it passes the time and makes me happy. And then there’s killer su doku – can’t even pretend that achieves anything.

The same goes (in spades) for the writing, of course. I’m quite impressed that I’ve kept it going for as long as I have – though in the past I’ve done it for years – why did I give it up? Maybe partly because it takes up a huge amount of time, that’s why the mornings go so fast, and afternoons are always filled up with the radio, so that’s the day gone. It’s interesting, though, to reflect that it’s not these things that make me stressed. I’m calmer and happier now, and that’s because I’m doing these things by myself – these pointless, meaningless things – and I don’t feel like I have to make myself go out and be with people.

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Happy Days

A couple of weeks ago, a friend said to me on Twitter: ‘This must be a good time to be alive for people who don’t like to go out’. Which incensed me because what I’d been saying was that I need to make myself go out and interact with people, because otherwise I’m worried that I will close down and disappear inside myself. Anyway, who was he to tell me how I was feeling?

But, strangely enough, I am enjoying life at the moment – well, I know I wasn’t a few days ago, but that was for other reasons. The relief of not having to think: ‘It’s such and such a day, I need to be there by this time and be with them…’ is actually helping me to relax and accept life. My simple routine is starting to sort out my days. I aim to do my half hour of exercise and meditation, feed the cat and let her out, and be at my computer with a cup of coffee by 8 o’clock – it doesn’t always work out that way, but I don’t beat myself up if it doesn’t. No one is expecting me to be anywhere else.

My health is good, my finances comfortable, my freezer full. The sun is shining; I have breakfast outside every morning after I’ve finished my 500 words – sometimes it’s as late as 11, but it doesn’t really matter. Last week there were three times when I connected with people through Facebook, Zoom or Skype: for meditation, tai chi and my weekly session with my psychotherapist. The fixed points of my routine are more frequently dictated by the radio schedules – 1 o’clock on weekdays for the half hour drama serial on 4 extra, and 3 pm every day for an hour of drama on 4 or 4 extra (though I can always catch up online). I’ve had to go out to the shops on four days out of the last seven, but for now I’m fine, until the milk runs out, which will be about Tuesday.

Having reduced housework to the level of: ‘I’m out of clean knickers, better put a load of washing on’, I’ve caught myself once or twice spontaneously tidying up some small area just to make my living space more pleasant, rather than because I’m frantically looking for something vital – yesterday I even started weeding the garden, and found myself enjoying it – I think partly because it’s quite satisfying to be pulling things out, rather than trying to coax them to grow. I crochet and weave – I tried something new in my weaving the other day, which didn’t work out, so had to undo it, but that’s ok because now I can do it again but better. My paper crafting stuff is all over the kitchen table and has been for weeks now – I keep thinking I’ll do something with it. Might even revive the idea of making a book from the haikus I wrote for NaPoWriMo in 2018.