SOCIAL DISTANCE

I feel like I’ve been training for social distancing for four years. Though there was no CDC order or pandemic to escape from, our move to the farm was it’s own form of self-isolation. I fought the move for as long as I could. Living within walking distance of my very best girlfriends was one of the only things that kept me sane in those first few trying years of marriage and motherhood.

I hadn’t anticipated how much I would miss living in Chattanooga, but the more permanent the distance between my old home and new life felt, the heavier the tinge of homesickness became. As they so often do, my girlfriends brightened my days and held me together. The thought of living even 30 minutes from them seemed like a self-inflicted fast track to a state of depression. In many ways, it was.

I don’t remember feeling particularly lonely in the first year after the move, but I was certainly alone often-probably more so than I’d ever been in my entire life. It was so damn quiet out here. I loved it and loathed it all at once.

I had a wonderful home, a healthy family, space and beautiful views all within a short drive from the social life I’d been used to. It felt like the best of everything and yet, I found myself wanting to jump out of my skin. I had nothing to distract me from my feelings of unfulfillment and discontentment anymore.

In the quiet I could finally hear all of the shouting in my heart and in my head, and in all of this open space there was nowhere to hide from it. It was the most challenging year of my life, but from it came the most invaluable lessons.

Through my own social distance, I remembered how to be still with my thoughts, how to write my way through my feelings, how to prioritize my time and meaningful relationships, how to sense negative energy and allow myself to turn in the opposite direction. I remembered how to find joy in running outside, or reading a book. I remembered gratitude and God. I remembered how to trust myself.

It has taken some getting used to, but I appreciate this space and all it continues to teach me more every day. So in the difficult moments of today’s version of social distancing, I’m trying to hold tight to the belief that there will come a time when we can all look back on this experience with gratitude for what it taught us.

Perhaps those of us who are lucky enough to say the worst of this was the time spent apart, will think of it as a season of reflecting on what matters most and move forward with an urgency to seek only that. We might find our way back to creativity and nature and in my experience those are the most reliable avenues back to ourselves. Maybe in missing each other, we will find true beauty we’ve been missing in each other and within ourselves all along. I hope there will be a point when we look back and say: it was one of the most challenging times of our lives, but from it came the most invaluable lessons.