Her skin was beginning to blot.

The red spots went up my friend's throat like a thermometer rising. [I was in Edinburgh, Scotland, and she was in New York. She was confined away from her two small children. Promoted just before quarantine, she was struggling to juggle her new responsibilities while taking care of the children's homeschooling and other activities. She raised her children alone while her husband worked at a nearby office. She needed to be free from the screaming and insistent demands of her children, she explained.

I was in the middle of a bubble bath, locked away.

She could not hide her frustration that she had caught me in the middle of my daily act of self-care isolation.

"It's hard," she warned me, "being a mother.

"You think you know what you're doing, but until you actually do it, you don't know how hard it is."

I had a clue.

From a very young age, I often heard my father say, "You should have waited to have me." "Ready" for me was later than for others, but not because I did not want to have children. I agree with the adage that "you are never ready," but I wanted to be ready before I turned my attention from myself to my family. As I got older, having a partner was no longer a requirement for life or for having children; I am grateful that I did not marry the man I wanted to in my twenties, and especially grateful that I did not have their children; I am grateful that I did not have a partner in my twenties, and I am grateful that I did not have their children.

For a variety of reasons, I did not have the opportunity to have children in my thirties. Instead, I proudly used that time to become the person I had envisioned myself to be before procreation became imminent. Despite the passive-aggressive warnings from the debutante cult, I did not die of attrition as I reached the age of 35, still single and childless. Instead, I took a sabbatical from "growing up," moved countries, and spent the dying days of my youth taking advantage of being single, childless, and with minimal responsibilities. He enjoyed partying in red solo cups, never mind financially, and even joined Tinder. I thought I must have met some promising men during that time. But none of the men I met could be called "the one."

So in my 40s, I began to deliberately consider becoming a single mother, and soon thereafter I met a wonderful man who did not want children. At the time, I wrote about how I wrestled with this relationship and the certainty of my desire to have children, and I assured him that if I had to have children, I would raise them alone (opens in new tab). I was definitely misled by love, especially since we had a strong friendship, and I hoped he would consider a relationship with me, a single mother (via adoption). But when Scotland was sealed off, he said, it was only logical that we "part ways."

"There is no way I could do this alone," my friend continued during our call. 'If you really knew what you were doing, you wouldn't have volunteered to do this on your own,' he said."

Now I was the one who was taking a beat. [For someone who has endured relentlessly scathing comments about being single and childless for decades, being able to worry about myself in the middle of a global pandemic began to feel like I was being dealt a winning hand. After the doom and gloom subsided as I watched panicked parents actually have to raise their children 24/7, I witnessed them struggle with impossible expectations in real time. People who had lived happily with their children before the pandemic were very vocal in my presence as they faced for the first time having to juggle remote work and managing their children's daily lives in the absence of social outlets.

Because of this, I have come to value my alone time more during this period of closure. Sometimes it is better to be alone than to feel constantly trapped.

Even without children, quarantine began to chip away at my mental health (open in new tab). I considered adoption partly because I feared that the hormonal changes that pregnancy brings would debilitate me mentally, especially without the support system of a partner. (Opens in new tab). Of course, no one expected that many women who gave birth during the COVID-19 crisis would be asked to do exactly that. Reading their stories gave me a glimpse of how difficult it would be for me and my children. For me, with no family, it is an especially lonely option.

Not to mention, what if I get sick as a single mom? What if I got sick as a single mother, or what if I got injured? Still, I would have forgotten about it had it not been for the coronavirus, and I am thankful that I had not yet become a mother at that time.

And then there is the stress of being a parent in the midst of the unexpected.

Eight weeks into the confinement, I found my cat vomiting up a thread. I was beyond panicked and called my ex in tears. Despite the fact that we hadn't spoken in weeks, he dropped everything and accompanied me to the emergency vet.

Sitting outside six feet away in the unusually hot for the Scottish sun, I saw the thin but steady stream of sweat from his face. If this had been my child instead of my cat, would he have rushed to my side?

"Can you imagine if this were a child? I asked.

"Oh, yes," he said.

Now I found myself seriously considering the question that the lockdown had pushed to the forefront of my mind: do I really want to do this alone?

I sink deeper into the bath.

Bubbling with steam, my skin begins to blotch.

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