Lockdown Has Murdered My Social Skills. Where Do I Go From Here?

This may sound odd, but do you know how I might go about skipping the country, and starting a new life under an assumed name? It’s just that, this morning, I raised my fist at our local window-cleaner.

There was a knock at my door, you see, and I answered it to find our friendly local window-cleaning duo on my doorstep – hands on hips, like superheroes – to announce the return of regular service now lockdown was easing.

How did I choose to respond to this? Did I say “hooray!” or “thank goodness!”, or offer them a cup of tea and enquire after their wellbeing? Oh, no. Not me.

What I chose to do was raise my fist. I raised my fist at the window-cleaners, as if to say “fight the power”. Even as my arm was ascending, it occurred to me that this wasn’t quite the appropriate response, so I took the only next step that made sense at the time: I closed the front door.

That’s right – someone said something completely unremarkable to me, and I responded by silently raising my fist, and then closing the door.

The thing is, I didn’t push the front door hard enough, so while it creaked shut there was plenty of time for my small, half-dressed, paint-caked sons to halt their patio-based finger-painting activities and join me in the hall. And, seeing that I had one arm up in the air, they each raised an arm, too.

I will never forget the petrified look on the window-cleaners’ faces as they watched the front door eclipse this horrific vignette – three figures, two smaller ones in some sort of primitive warpaint – waiting silently in the gloom of the hallway, each with one arm raised, glaring malevolently at them.

So you see, now, how it’s imperative I leave this place immediately, and begin a new life far away, where no one knows my shame.

Lockdown has murdered my social skills. I haven’t been anywhere new, or really made conversation with anyone apart from my husband and two boys for four months.

My friends have very rich social lives, despite lockdown, conducted via Zoom. Post-work drinks; nightly dates with significant others they haven’t seen since March; actual dates through online dating apps; quiz nights; virtual theatre; Netflix party film-watching marathons; book clubs; and, touchingly, quite a few have Sunday lunch up at the computer to be with their families.

I don’t do any of this. But then, unlike me, many of my friends are locked down alone, in flat-shares, or with only pets (nice pets, of course) for company. Meanwhile, I don’t even have a Zoom account.

Because all I’m ever after is a bit of quiet. I’m trying to do my full-time job from home on part-time hours – as is my husband – while we try to inflict home-schooling on our two small sons, but frequently give up in favour of forest walks, terrible baking, or far too much screen time.

Our days start before 6am, and our kids, unsettled by the change and weird, new rules (“Were kids allowed in playgrounds in ancient times, Mummy?”) may not fall asleep before 9pm. This pretty much gives me 30 full minutes of “grown-up time” – which I’d rather spend in the bath, halfway into a bottle of sauvignon blanc, or dozing off in front of Succession – than talking into a webcam.

In a lot of ways, lockdown is similar to my regular life. When I was pregnant with my older son, five years ago, my husband and I moved out the city to the suburbs. After the baby was born, we went into the weird proto-lockdown that is the baby bubble, and hardly ever socialised.

Then we noticed the baby was a great excuse to get out of social obligations, which – being a pair of introverts who sometimes find social activity utterly draining – we exploited, turning down dinner invitations here and pub nights there (“Sorry, the baby is colicky” – which wasn’t a lie).

When my maternity leave ended, I decided to go freelance, and started working from home instead of returning to my office job and city commute. And I’m very happy I did this. But now – after having another child, too – I’m even more indoorsy and antisocial than ever.

What I mean by this is: my pyjama game is strong (I have day pyjamas, work pyjamas and professional pyjamas), but my social skills are poor.

Even my family are better at socialising than me. Both kids have regular video playdates, and it turns out my husband – who claims to hate everyone – is on WhatsApp groups for both the street and our school. I, on the other hand, started a WhatsApp group for my mum-friends at the beginning of lockdown – it’s very active, but I’ve posted in it, maybe, once? My family also pile into the car twice a week to visit their granddad – my father-in-law – maintaining respectful distances in his long skinny garden.

More recently, though, people have been asking me to hang out. Online, and also for socially-distant local walks. Maybe I should take them up on it. Staying in my epic, five-year maternity-leave-freelancing-lockdown-bubble might be comfortable, but it will only worsen my anxiety when in social situations.

The other day a friend rang for a chat, and I greeted her with, “Hello, how can I help you?”. During a GP’s appointment by phone to investigate a rash, I said the words: “How is my skin wrong?”

And – even worse – on Father’s Day, I baked my father-in-law a lasagne and made the biggest social lockdown error yet. When he popped by the house, I hugged him. I. Hugged. Him. He does not live with us, and I hugged him. He is already in a bubble with other members of the family, and I hugged him. My husband and my children gave a little yell, but even then it took me a good 30 seconds to figure out the problem.

“Well, I enjoyed it,” my father-in-law quipped. I was mortified.

To date, everyone seems fine – we’ve all been isolating, so hopefully exposure would be minimal – but even so, it’s not great news. And I can’t help thinking that, had I not been so deep inside my own bubble, I might not have been so unthinking as to completely interrupt his bubble.

So, socially-distant social life, here I come. Either that, or starting a new life somewhere else. At any rate, I’ve signed up to Zoom at last.