The Chaotic Loneliness of Parenting

It’s a bit of a paradox, really

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Chaotic. LOUD. Lonely?

These three words shouldn’t go together. If something or someplace is chaotic and loud, by definition, it has to be filled with life, with movement, with energy.

And loneliness is supposed to be the absence of all that. It’s silent rooms with the shades drawn, dinner for one, talking to yourself just to hear the sound of a voice.

But this stage of parenting I’m in right now — my three children are in elementary and early middle school — is all these things combined.

Chaotic. LOUD. Lonely.

Of course, everyone’s experience is different, and my particular mixture of seemingly incongruous characteristics is perhaps largely attributable to my personality, my location, and how I do parenting.

First, I’m socially anxious and introverted so I never seek out friends. For example, my children have been playing with the same group of children in the neighborhood for at least three years now and I just exchanged phone numbers with one of the friend’s parents a few months ago. I know all the kids around here very well but I know next to nothing about their parents.

Which brings me to location.