Freckle Face Hermit

A radical change has taken place over the last few months. It may sound strange given the fact that I work from home, but I have NEVER been a home body. In fact, I highly doubt there were a handful of days in my life when I stayed home the entire day and wasn’t feverishly ill. Not even as a brand new mom. It just isn’t who I am.

However, the shift into hermit mode began about the time the kids started school in the Fall. They went off to school and I stopped doing activities outside of my home and socializing with my friends. Sure I take and pick-up the kids from school, go to the grocery store, go to church, run errands, and occasionally socialize without any hesitation, but more than ever I am hanging out at home. Since this is so foreign to me, I can’t help but analyze the possible underlying reasons. At first, I figured I just needed a break. The exhaustion of the last few years had really caught up to me. I cut myself some slack and decided to be a little closed off. I was still opening up to friends on the phone so what was the big deal?

Now, after almost four months, I realize that I am getting worse not better. I had a few holiday gatherings that I enjoyed this month (including a QUICK trip to Miami for a company Christmas party), but most days I just stayed home. I didn’t think I would be like this during the kids’ break from school. I just haven’t felt like going out and they have seemed fine with it. I must admit that we do go on walks and bike rides. We’re not locked in the house all day every day.

As if becoming a hermit isn’t bad enough, I have even started semi-enjoying a few activities that I have never been too fond of. The most shocking one is sewing. I had not even plugged in my sewing machine in over two years. Suddenly, I have been making lots of projects and not hating it. The other shocking activity is reading. In the middle of December, I started reading Hunger Games (years after everyone else). In four days, I finished all three books in the series. Then I went into Amazon and downloaded several free books onto my Kindle (hand-me-down from my sister). Not that I hate reading novels, but I have never liked it enough to devote more than a day or two of the year to reading them.

Last week and today, I have had a chance to reflect on the last few months and the coming months and I realize that mainly I feel completely defeated. 2011 was a really hard year. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. I had no idea why, premonitions do not usually spell things out. Having said that, I also see that a million little/huge great things happened that help me get by often at the last minute. I still feel beat down with no end to the tough times in sight. Despite that, I am full of hope. This is not an engulfing depression that makes me suicidal. It is just about being a hermit, which continues to persist. Perhaps, this is a passive way to deal with the issues I am facing. By hiding out, I am hoping they will just get bored and go away (all emotion and no logic). I guess on the bright side, it is never a bad thing to catch up on reading and my sewing skills definitely needed/still need improvement.

On to a new year with hopes that the future will be so bright, I’ll be able to block out some of 2011.