Secretly kinda loved social distancing? You're not alone...

When the coronavirus pandemic shut down the world as we knew it, our social lives came screeching to a halt. While some girls began counting the minutes until they could pack their calendars again, others like Shay Rudolph, 14, realized that staying home wasn’t quite so bad after all. Here, Shay explains how quarantine gave her a chance to be her truest self.

- Shay Rudolph

A bunch of us are going to the beach this weekend. Wanna come?”

The question filled me with dread—which sounds weird, I know. Who dreads being invited to hang out with their crew? After months of not being legally allowed to get together, my friends were finally planning a beach trip as a way to reconnect face-to-face after quarantine (granted, from six feet apart, but still…).

“Oh, thanks, but I don’t really want to go to the beach,” I answered shakily.

“Wait...so you can leave your house finally…but you’re choosing to stay home?”

“Yeah, I kind of prefer it that way,” I replied, as a wave of relief rushed over me. Finally, I was admitting something that had secretly always been true about me: I actually like being alone.

I consider myself an introverted extrovert. I’m not shy at all, and I stay very busy. I was used to always doing something, always scheduling out what I was going to do every second of every day, always in go-go-go mode—until a worldwide pandemic forced me to chill, that is.