I have always cherished my alone time.
However, it’s a different lonely. And my history with loneliness is deep.
When I was living in my hometown, I was incredibly lonely. I bounced from different lunch tables in elementary school and junior high after each gave me some form of rejection until high school, where I just stopped caring and did my math homework wherever I happened to be. After I got my license, I just went home to eat since I never had any lunch money.
In college, I was lonely; but that’s because I was perpetually single and didn’t think I deserved any kind of decent relationship. I was always rich in friends and places to go (but never with any money to spend). Just being away from my hometown was incredibly therapeutic for me. I could come and go as I wanted, hell I could even leave a party without telling anyone JUST. BECAUSE. I. COULD. And I did. I could make the choice to be alone; to regroup when it was all too much for me.
When I was 24, I had my own apartment in Houston. I had, until I got laid off and lost it. I went through a different loneliness after because I was still floundering with dating and the transition from social overkill to watching friends move on with their lives while I had to start over a couple of times. That was a far cry from the lonelier parts of my life, but important nonetheless.
I had my own apartment again when I was 28, in New Braunfels – but I left it to move in with my now husband. I haven’t been alone since.
Now I work from home and watch over the baby. I’m four months deep, but chained to this house because I’ve decided to exclusively breastfeed. The most sentences I say until my husband comes home are “do you need to go outside” to the dog, and things like “are you hungry,” and “who’s a cutie-wootie”, and “oh no, Mr. Man, it’s okay” as I try to comfort a fussy, 13 lb bundle of smiles and dimples and a bald little head and poopy diapers.
The first time I was around someone who was breastfeeding a newborn, I was over at a friend’s house after college. Her mom told me that breastfeeding is one of the loneliest things you can do. I get it now. It’s Saturday night and I’m sitting with a cooing baby and a silent mutt – along with some friends I met in high school – Eric, Donna, Hyde – wait. I am just binge watching another Netflix show while no other adults are around so that I feel less lonely. I can’t go out and drink martinis for hours because I am the only thing feeding this little guy, and if I’m not sober by 9 or 10 when I give him his last feeding before sleep, I wake up in the incredible pain that comes from not emptying milk out of your boobs. I got a touch of mastitis and I do NOT want to get that shit again.
This kind of lonely is different.
Now I spend the majority of my time alone with the baby, but I have the internet. I have netflix for when he’s napping (which is a lot). I talk to my husband over gtalk all day and clients through email, text, and sometimes on the phone. My recreational time is what suffers. It’s kind of weird. Now when I’m with my friends I’m not as witty or charming as I used to be and mostly just listen. I stopped following current events because the news this year is a shitcan of drama and my up-and-down postpartum hormones were just not working in my favor. I had a hard enough time when they killed Michael off Jane the Virgin when I was riding the postpartum and milk producing hormones like a hurricane (SERIOUSLY HOW COULD THEY).
But yeah. Lately when I’m around my friends I have little to talk about. I don’t know if I’m out of practice or just exhausted all the time, or just mentally drained from switching from mom to boss to mom to boss to mom all within five minutes of each other, all day, every day (and strangely enough, working, cleaning, turning this place into a home, and mom’in is all I seem to want to do. Some people would call that a sign of depression). However, I am never too tired to be clever and witty and participating in text, instant messaging, and facebook messaging. And I always seem to handle client phone calls well. When I talk to clients, it is never from a place where one is deprived of conversation.
It’s different this time because I’m never alone. I’m always with someone I love dearly; the baby or the baby and the husband. Sometimes, we even leave the house together. It’s rare, it’s probably happened a total of three times so far. We had an understanding we weren’t taking the baby a lot of places and weren’t going to be “those people”. So I’m home a lot. Like, permanently, it feels. Most of it is due to the fact that the baby needs to eat every couple of hours, sometimes can only be calmed down by me, and pumping is kind of annoying so it’s just less trouble that I stick around. Plus, the added stress of getting whatever I need done quickly so I can be home in case he finishes all the milk I have pumped in the fridge is not worth it, either. I’m tied to the little man and he’s tied to me (and sometimes I even pump just so I can have wine at home). And I don’t really mind it unless I’m trying to figure out when the last time I washed my hair was. Or I think about my friends. Or trying to figure out if the first stages of motherhood are a vortex of happiness and isolation or is it just me. It’s a loneliness I’m content with.
I have more now than I’ve ever dreamed. I have a business that I’ve built from the ground up, a cute baby, a comfortable home. I have a wonderful backyard with a pool, and cardinals, and bunnies (sometimes), and fireflies, and blue jays, and bats, and jet planes from the nearby military city, and regular airplanes from the nearby airport, and beautiful sunsets and lovely trees. I started a garden and there’s never nothing to do here. I have a smart and successful husband and we landed in the just-right-sized town to live in – and I can’t wait for the baby to get a little older so we can do all the family friendly things this town has to offer.
Earlier, my husband was out, and the little man and I sat outside in the backyard to watch the sun set. I didn’t even have to put on pants. And we watched the bats fly after little mosquitoes, and I wondered if the ice cream I made earlier is actually going to set up in the freezer. We watched a jet make a stream across the sky, and we listened to kids in the park. And I watched his big eyes take it all in. And I felt content in the moment. It’s freeing to never have to be “on”, because I can just be silent and observe. I can smile, and someone always smiles back. I can read things on the internet and not have to discuss them. And thankfully I don’t ever have to fake a “good morning!” every morning, because frankly I just would not have the energy for it. I’d so much rather write than speak lately.
I know I’ll be fine. This isn’t depression. It’s just a shade of loneliness that’s more pink than grey. And I’m okay with that.
