It’s a good time to reach out
Pandemic life without friends? Now that’s hard.
I have known most of my friends for more than 10 years; I have a core group of female friends I’ve known for more than 25 years. We grew up together, attended mosque and school together, watched each other graduate, find jobs, fall in love, get married. We’ve thrown each other bridal and baby showers, celebrated milestones and supported each other through painful loss. Yet I haven’t seen most of them in months, and I’m not sure when we will all be able to gather in the same space again. Spring? Summer? Fall? I’ve given up on making predictions and plans at this point.
One thing is for sure: the COVID-19 pandemic and accompanying social restrictions have changed every aspect of our lives — but especially the way we socialize.
For one, conversations have dried up. What is there to talk about, when no one is going anywhere? No trips to plan or boast about; no point buying pretty clothes or makeup; no outings to discuss in our locked-down reality. Life marches on, sure, but the usual topics of conversation have changed.
For another, there’s more anxiety caused by stress over jobs, health, or having kids underfoot all day with school closures. Sadly, I’ve lost or grown distanced from friends over the course of the pandemic, in some cases over silly tiffs that would have been easily cleared up if things were normal. Now, everyone is on a short leash emotionally, and we all have fewer outlets to blow off steam.
It doesn’t help that we are living much of our lives online, where words can be so easily misinterpreted.
So, without face-to-face interaction, what’s left?
I love my husband and my sons; I’m grateful for their company during this time. But I need more people in my life. I always thought I was a natural introvert. As a kid, I had trouble making friends in school. I was too nerdy, too bookish, and my kooky sense of humour didn’t jive with my fellow classmates. As a result, I spent a lot of time during grade school sitting in the corners of rooms reading, writing or daydreaming. But as an adult, I need regular doses of other people to feel normal, balanced and whole.
French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre famously wrote, “Hell is other people.” As we approach the one-year anniversary of the first Ontariowide lockdown, I’d like to quote my good friend Aminah: “You need friends during the pandemic, or you will go nuts.”
I call Aminah weekly, sometimes more; she’s a high school teacher, too, and during our calls we compare notes on life in the trenches, or moan about our lack of social life. I’m not sure I would have gotten through the last lockdown, or the current one, without these phone calls to her and my other friends.
When there’s nowhere to go and no change in the daily routine beside trips to the grocery store, it’s refreshing to listen to a familiar, friendly voice. It is reassuring to know that I am not alone in my frustration at the same endless loop of days. How else will you know that you are not alone, if you are always alone?
The inherent aloneness of pandemic life has also encouraged me to reach out, to check in, to make more of an effort to keep the ties that are important to me, the ones that aren’t based on blood and family, but by a shared history and experience.
And it’s not just me. Ibrahim has started talking to friends on the phone, a rare habit for a 2021 teen to pick up. My sons have started to play games online with friends, something they would only do rarely in the “before times.” We’ve all started exercising regularly — a new habit for me, and one that has quickly become a necessary tool to deal with the stress and isolation.
Even my husband, a ‘social camel’ able to go months without talking to close buddies, has started having rambling phone conversations with friends.
Though this moment feels permanent,
I know that one day we will return to spontaneous dinner plans, scheduled coffee dates, clubs and gyms and sporting events and concerts and theatre performances and parties and (please, God) no lines outside Costco.
In the meantime, I am so very grateful to my friends for every meme, joke, collective complaining session, and reminder of their presence in my life, for now and forever. Inshallah.