School year re-entry is always a little bit hard. The summertime household is a busy bustle of activity with my husband off school and The Freeloader home all day with him. When I worked in the office, I'd leave in the morning and come home to dinner prep already underway and it would leave more evening family time for everyone. The past couple of summers have been a bit different since there was no more going to the office, and we've all been languishing quite a bit in our pandemic lifestyle. The to-do list my husband usually builds for himself and tackles every summer did not appear this year. Life continued almost as it would have if we were all still working, though he was able to spend the summer recovering from his burnout while I continued to work and overload my already burned out system with more burnout to the point where my body completely rebelled against me and landed me in the hospital for a day and then incapable of working for roughly a week. Oh yeah, it's been a fun year.

But with all of us home for all of the time we have been this past year, school year re-entry hit a little harder. My husband went back to work last week and The Freeloader had been in an actual classroom for a week prior to that and I came to realize that I had grown very used to them being around the house. I had grown used to the activity going on around me, even if I had been working in the basement all day. I had gotten used to hearing them upstairs, or getting a quick hug between meetings, or being able to chit chat with my husband about my day on a quick run to grab a snack before my next call started. When the house became empty suddenly, I came to realize how much I missed everyone. By the end of the week, I just wanted to throw everyone into a cuddle puddle and stay there for the next two days. As much as I've enjoyed the silence and the productivity, I missed being surrounded by my people.

Oddly, with everyone gone back to their every day normal routines, I am finding myself in my own weird period of languishing. I am somehow both lonely and also overtaxed on contact. I keep finding myself struggling to keep up with people I really do want to keep up with. I struggle to send the text message, make the phone call, be the one to reach out. This is generally who I am, the one who is always like "Hey, thought about you for some random reason today and wanted to check in!" but right now I'm just having a hard time being that person. I'm sad. Like, I haven't found the root of it, but I am just......sad. Sad that the world is still where it is. Sad that I have to worry about The Freeloader's contact with people in school. Sad that I still don't feel like I can make plans with friends or family or even consider plans for upcoming holidays. Sad that I'm genuinely debating whether The Freeloader should go trick-or-treating this year. Sad that I am unable to replenish my spirt with the things that make me happy because those are still out of reach at the moment.

I'm sad.

And all of my favorite people are out attempting to live semi-normal lives again.

And I'm here.

And I'm sad.

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