Some of Us Have Been Practicing Social Distancing For Decades Now
Needless to say, obeying coronavirus-induced restrictions, legal and otherwise, against congregating in large groups, socializing face to face and going to parties is easier for people who prefer not to congregate in large groups, socialize face to face, or attend parties even when there is not a pandemic threatening our future.
I am one of these solitary souls. I have been unknowingly practicing social distancing for as long as can remember for reasons that that have little to do with public safety and everything to do with maternal abandonment, childhood trauma, deep-seated insecurities and debilitating social anxiety.
I have always been uncomfortable in my own skin and nervous around other people. I had such a difficult time making and keeping friends growing up that I decided, at an early age, that maybe having friends wasn’t for me after all.
Sure, Sesame Street and pretty much every other television show, movie and book depicted friendship as wonderful. Pop culture as a whole is filled with pro-friendship propaganda but to my anxiety-wracked younger self the drawbacks to pursuing friendships outweighed the advantages.
The very idea of friendship was terrifying to me. You had to talk to other people and do some weird, nebulous, poorly defined thing called “hanging out” and then, obviously there came that terrible and inevitable day when whoever you were trying to befriend realized that you were not worthy of friendship and cut you out of their life, coldly and completely.
Better not to bother with friendship in the first place then face the crushing disappointment that would inevitably ensue when friendships ended bitterly. So I reconciled myself to a solitary life. Besides, who needs friends when you had movies and music and books and masturbation?
In the years I toiled at an office I sometimes felt like I was walking through a psychological landmine every morning when I entered my workplace. I felt alone at work long before I started working from home.
Self-employment and working from home only strengthened my hermit-like tendencies. Being someone who does not need much in the way of social interaction outside of my family, working from home and self-employment both suited me and my temperament.
Twenty-three years in, I’ve finally found a lasting and permanent professional home that just so happens to also be my real home as well.
I prefer social media to face to face interactions precisely because of the distance, social and otherwise, that Facebook affords introverts and loners and the socially awkward like myself. Social media gives us an opportunity to connect with other human beings without the terror of real-life interaction. That distance made me feel safer and more secure even before this virus changed everything and isolated us all from each other and the world at large.
I’m one of those introverts who takes the aphorism “No man is an island” as a challenge, as in, “Oh yeah, motherfucker? Then watch this!” so social distancing and self-quarantining has been easier for me than it has been for other, more gregarious and outgoing souls.
I have been practicing social distancing for so long that I have damn near perfected it, albeit in a manner that is almost undoubtedly ultimately detrimental to my happiness and mental health.
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