The Isolation Journals

For the past several months, I have been subscribing to Suleika Jaouad’s masterful and enchanting Isolation Journal daily prompts. Every morning, at 5 am, Suleika’s evocative leads would appear in my inbox, casting a line into the tiny fissures of my iced-over narrative of memory to fish out thoughts unexplored.

 The intent of Suleika’s Isolation Journals was to create a way to stay grounded during these unprecedented times. She encouraged us to tap into a creative act each day, that would forge solitude into connection by performing it collectively.

 What hooked me into her project was the concept of isolation. Unlike her target audience, I had begun to crave solitude, with a voracious hunger. I fantasized about having 24 hours to myself. I dreamed about waking up to an empty house, the silence of it, the long stretch of a day in front of me where the only schedule I adhered to was that of my own circadian rhythm.

 I appreciated the irony of my captivation with this project; whereas the majority of Suleika’s subscribers desired a way out of their Isolation through these daily exercises, I became obsessed with a way in.

 The intensity of living in 2300 square feet with two kids under four could be likened to living in one of those carnival fun houses. The colors are assaulting, the ground shifts beneath you without warning, shrill horns stun you when you turn the corner. Can you picture the part of the fun house that’s like a human sized hamster wheel? Where you get to walk through a spinning tube? Where it throws you off balance onto the ground and then keeps rolling you around while you flail? That is what our house felt like. All I wanted was to lock myself in a dark, cool room, crawl under a heavy comforter and experience zero stimulation for two hours.

 Forget about connecting with others, I just wanted to connect with myself. I yearned for a moment of introspection, where I didn’t feel obligations tugging at my time. I started to feel parts of myself retreating. I felt emotionally isolated from myself. I could not find the elements of my identity that weren’t a mother, wife or colleague – who I was when I was not “on”. Because these days I was always on.

 I struggled to verbalize the mental exhaustion and in its absence would get into bed at 7 pm. Michael would have been worried but he wanted to do the same thing. In his case it was more due to the physical exhaustion though. In mine I just wanted the stimuli to stop so I could be with my thoughts for 20 minutes before passing out.

 On a particularly bad weekend, I yelled at Sy, walked into the table and got a huge black and blue on my thigh, and poured a drink at 3:30. Michael found a time that he could be with the kids on his own for two nights/days and told me I needed to go spend some time alone.

 So on Thursday afternoon I got in the car with Bean and drove 3.5 hours to my parent’s empty house in Cape Cod. I walked to the beach with a glass of wine and sat for an hour. Yesterday I got on a bike and rode 30 miles up to North Falmouth and back to Woods Hole. And this morning, I’m sitting here doing what I have been craving since March - to simply write in an empty house (thank you my dear Michael for this incredible gift!).

We are all multi-dimensional, and what I’ve found we’ve lost during the pandemic are some of those critical dimensions that round us out into fully-functional human beings. Whether we’ve lost jobs and their associated purpose, our social outlets and the fulfillment we find in connecting with others, our connection with ourselves (as is my case), or all of the above - so much has been lost without a clear roadmap of how to regain it.

I encourage you to dig into which part of your identities are neglected to figure out what you need to feel whole again. I found the helplessness I feel about all things external mitigated by digging into what I could fix internally, at least for 24 hours. Now back to the House of Fun.