Introverts in Covid
BY TOMMIE BROWN
As soon as news broke of the severity of both the Coronavirus and the toilet paper shortage around the entire world, it took me and my family about a day to jump into action in preparation of whatever tidal wave was about to hit our Southern California community. Living at home with my working mom and ten-year-old sister, I was the only available adult to make the dreaded and dangerous shopping runs throughout the day. I remember my first trip out. I went to the grocery store to find paper towels, of which we genuinely needed, and within hours the one main shopping location in my small town was completely barren. There, on a Tuesday afternoon, standing amidst hundreds of rows of emptiness while everyone side-eyed each other from 6ft apart, is where I realized we had all become enemies overnight.
By nature, I’m not a person that gets out much. I am the level of ‘homebody’ that not even self-proclaimed ‘homebodies’ think is endearing or cozy. As a writer and online tutor, for the most part my job is to not leave the house. That’s not to mention my near crippling social anxiety and “artist’s depression,” as I like to call it. All factors considered, any great adventure I could ever hold the hopes of having has to exist somewhere between my mailbox and the backyard.
When the pandemic first hit, it was my own form of hell. Getting bare necessities called for me to wait outside of grocery stores hours before they even opened, waiting in lines with people who thought our common ground in fear of illness meant small talk was a free for all. But after a handful of these treacherous outings of bulk buying, my entire household leaped into the guidelines of the shelter-in-place. Within days of news breaking, no one left my house, and no one came in.
It’s no secret that within these last few months every time we opened our phones or turned on the television, voices from all over the world were echoing the same message - stay away from one another. People from every country started sharing their woe stories of hours blurring, keeping track of days by tally marks on the walls of their quarantined prison cells. But all the while silently watching the world burn, my once anxious and wintry identity started to thaw amidst the flames of forced isolation.
At the beginning of tiptoeing through a collapsing, ghost town, society, I was both ashamed and confused by the immediate relief and freedom I felt as soon as lockdown peaked. Why was I suddenly mentally and emotionally thriving under orders that changed practically nothing about my introverted lifestyle? And how could I ever admit that within waves of death, I had become alive?
I kept my glowing thoughts to myself as the weeks passed, but it was evident that I had blossomed into something different. I was making art I gave up on as a kid, finding bravery and voice in my writing, repainting every corner of my existence with warm yellows and burnt reds. I watched as panic struck communities, unemployment rates skyrocketed, politicians seething - yet I was at peace. The word, I would later come to learn from my sister, that defines the experience for us joyful, unsociable quarantined, is salience.
The idea behind salience is that something becomes extraordinarily visible, not due to its unique qualities, but because of its differences in contrast to its otherwise uniform surrounding. The example I was given was to think of a woman walking into a room full of diverse people. Maybe a few others would notice, but overall, she’s just one more body in the space. But if that same woman walks into a room full of only men, suddenly her presence becomes outstanding.
In a more COVID-19 focused scenario, the introvert is the woman, and the sociables are the men. Even though we have wanted nothing more than to disappear, flying under the radar of the outgoing and the going out, our lack of presence in the room has amplified our existence.
Our social media posts show no backgrounds of bar hopping or group selfies. Our inboxes are either flooded with dreaded invites out or are completely deserted thanks to too many failed attempts. Society puts a spotlight on those who show no need nor desire to be a part of one. Until the Coronavirus.
Suddenly, the agonizing socialites were taking center stage. Their pains and anxieties over the outlaws of social gatherings were front page news. Those who dared defy the orders were scrutinized and guilted. The ‘homebody’ lifestyle once skepticized became heroic and noble for those who had never indulged in it. And for those of us who had never left it to begin with, we eased into finally disappearing from focus.
The thing is, to society, this was all unfamiliar territory. But for the anxiety ridden introvert, the deep looming fear that being overly sociable could cause us illness or death is a reality we have always navigated. So when the social distancing orders came into play, it didn’t feel so new to us, but rather that the rest of the world was finally catching up.
As the shelter-in-place orders slowly lift around the globe and the anxiety rekindles for us who have always found solace within seclusion, my hope is that we all remember the lesson learned within this pandemic.
To those of you who have spent the last few months falling asleep with an unexplained hope or wake up with a giddiness for life that seems taboo amongst this death. To those who can’t describe why suddenly the world feels in your favor and on your side. To those who are too human and tender to admit their disappointment as we watch our worlds drag themselves back to “normality.” And to those of you who have always been made to doubt your self-containment, to question if maybe you are self-harming by not having a night out or a rolodex worth of friends, to feel less than because you long for nothing outside of your four walls - remember.
The absolute only piece of clarity and indisputable fact within the COVID-19 pandemic, is that staying home, staying to ourselves, and finding joy because of it, was the healthiest choice anyone could make. And maybe the politicians and the protestors will no longer champion that staying home saves lives, but my hope is that we can all now carry as a weapon the confidence we found in knowing that it has always saved ours.
About the author
Tommie Christopher Brown is the girl with a full male name. Currently living in a small town in Southern California, Tommie is a writer whose style spreads from poetic to academic, but finds home somewhere marrying the two. She has a BA in English studies with a focus in Philosophy and has recently written and worked for VICELAND, WORD Agency, and Mitu. You can find more of her work here.