What's missing, and what's not

Over the last couple of weeks, my world has been able to shift a bit.  My husband had a break from classes, and with the return of free time also came the return of social interaction.  It made me notice a few things.  First and foremost, I miss social interaction.  Beyond that, I think I might need social interaction.  Up until the holiday everything felt like it was too much work.  Too much effort, too much work.  All of my normal enthusiasm for gatherings, and party planning was gone.  It was like I was just zapped of my ability to care about that kind of stuff.  Then the holiday season happened and suddenly there were social gatherings back in my life and it was like I got recharged.  Then, I realized that maybe my lack of ability to care about social gatherings was due to the lack of actually having them.  So, that led to wanting to continue having that social interaction, but life picked back up and I think those are off the table for the time being.


And having that back in my life made me realize how few people there are left to invite to something like that.  I used to have a list of go-to people, and now that list consists of two.  Two people.  That sort of reminded me of why I stopped pushing to have gatherings at the beginning of the fall.  Beyond life making it hard, the idea that my guest list was two people long felt lonely.  And depressing.  And it reminded me of how isolated I feel a lot of the time.  The isolation drains me.  The lack of a village drains me.  But, it also makes me grateful for the couple of people who stayed.


I do enjoy the time I have with my daughter, though.  I think it keeps me from being depleted.  It is still draining, because it's still life with a toddler, but it keeps me from feeling completely alone sometimes.  And I'm grateful for that. 


So, in the end, what's missing is a piece of the life I used to have.  And my village.  What's not missing is something to keep me from feeling the full brunt of that, and that something is pretty great.  It makes me smile nearly every day, even on days when I don't want to.