Anything, Literally Anything, For Some Solitude

Jess Soothill - 11 Jun 20

I love my little family, obviously. They mean the entire world to me. I live and breathe for them, I always have. My role as Mother is so precious and important to me. But OH MY GOD do I need a break from them all right now, (Husband fully included in this).

However, of course, there’s just no way of getting any kind of time apart at the moment due to you-know-what. Previously, BC (before Coronavirus) we’d have spent a fair bit of the week away from each other. My two children were in school five days a week, I was in the office for four. Hubby in work Mon-Fri and away a few nights of those too. And even at weekends the kids had parties, clubs and play-dates galore. Busy family, busy life. But now – due to the situation – the activities have all ground to a huge halt. Zero. No school. No offices. No weekend plans. No space.

Mostly it’s okay. Mostly we have got on with it and we are doing alright. We are incredibly thankful and fortunate that we have our health and that we have plenty of outside space around our home to explore. Sure, it’s not been a great three months overall, but it’s certainly not been awful – nor are we at the rough end like a lot of other people are. Plus, having a full-on working-from-home management job and the twins to home-school, feed and entertain means I have definitely not been bored (pah!). The days and weeks do go by fairly quickly. But still – any kind of possibility of me-time or self-care (that was THE big concept of early 2020) is pretty hard to come by right now.

During lock-down I exercise WAY more – not because I necessarily love it, but because the peace and quiet during that half an hour is worth the pain. I also do more housework; vacuuming upstairs alone for fifteen minutes is now pure bliss and not at all a chore. I put the laundry away and sneakily sit on the bed and open Instagram in the hope that no-one notices me for a bit (spoiler; they always do).

I interrupt writing this to get up to look out of the window and Hubby is standing at the back of the garden, just staring at the plants. Just looking on at them. He’s obviously trying to get some of his solitude in today too. The twins burst into my makeshift home office, run up to me and ask what they can have for a snack and I send them to him outside. Cruel I know, but let’s face it, these are desperate times (and believe me, he does his own fair bit of hiding around the house too).

Whilst Covid-19 is ultimately bringing us as a family MUCH closer together (it absolutely has already, we are all far tighter than ever before), one day of alone, uninterrupted time – not even necessarily doing anything exciting – would be just nice. Or even just two hours. That would do. I don’t even know what I’d do yet, I haven’t thought that far ahead, but I’m pretty confident I’d be able to fill the time up just fine.

Perhaps those days will be back soon (it feels as though they may already be on the horizon) and when they do I’ll probably be complaining about how much I miss the chaos and sighing at how busy our diaries all are again. But until then I might just grab my trainers and go for another quick run.

Jess Soothill

Hi, I’m Jess a Mum of boy and girl twins. I work part-time in HR and I'm a writer.

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