Piecing Together Friendships During Covid

I did not set myself up well for 2020. This summer, I had decided in 2019, would be when I would switch not only jobs but career paths. I was living with the world's worst roommate and wouldn't be moving out until this August. And in January of this year, I broke up with my best friend. 

Though I'd never fought with this friend before, we had a spat in late December (at the office no less) and I decided that, in the spirit of endings and beginnings that the new year brings, I would consciously cease putting effort into my friendship with her. That was immediately followed by two and a half months of many attempts to meet new people at work and online to fill in the gaps of my social life. 

I made a friend through Bumble that I ate, shopped, and took yoga classes with. I made a list of all the cool girls at work that I'd had "friend crushes" on and took deliberate steps to make good impressions with them. I continued to go to the co-ed sports I was involved in, arriving early and staying late just to increase the friend-making potential of my time.

But in mid-March, when we were directed to start working from home, I came face to face with the truth that, as I had thrown a wrench into my own social life by walking away from a friend, the world was about to do the same to me. I cried bitter tears in front of my partner as I explained, bewildered, how I had no idea how to handle making the new friends I was already needing.

My early solution was to cling to the social circle of my boyfriend. As my friends were spread out all over the city and lived with their families, it was much more convenient to spend time at his place, which was geographically close to all of his friends. This worked for a few months. Drinking with people who aren't close to you but are at least there felt like it was better than nothing. 

But my lack of emotional connection to my close friends slowly soured my relationship, and I became aware in real time that I had to fix my friendship dilemma fast, or else other parts of my life would be damaged. I couldn't rely on my partner to fill every need of connection that I needed from people.

I sat down and wrote out names of friends and made a loose schedule of how often I would call and text them, including on my list friends out of the state and a relative out of the country. When in quarantine, the distance feels the same as if the person were a mile away. I began to treat interactions like medicine; a phone call a day keeps the therapist away.

My relationship ended due to other reasons, which caused me to double down on my efforts with my friends. In the fall I made one more friend via Bumble, but I had essentially stopped focusing on new connections and began cultivating the old ones. I made my need for social interaction well known to my friends, with full transparency of the stakes - my mental health, my feeling of being human, my sense of purpose.

Things started improving with friends a few months after my breakup because, much like one would during any breakup, I reached out and my friends responded. But the vulnerability felt amazing because I realized that I no longer needed to wait for permission to admit that I was lonely. Quarantine gave all of humanity a point to connect over, so I took full advantage of it.

I scheduled friends to work with every third day, and every time I thought of a friend while browsing Instagram or daydreaming, I texted them the same moment, so that in real time my thoughts and feelings could be shared and then replied to by living breathing people. This was sweet sustenance to me, a level of human interaction that would pale in comparison to my life in February.

Any "fair-weather" friend I ever made I have not seen in person since before quarantine. The year stripped my social life of any rose color that made my connections seem like more than they were. Now I know who matters to me and who does not based on who I chose to connect with. I was never one for quantity, but even so, the quality of friendships has heightened.

A good three friends of mine have replaced the numerous coworkers I would pass by daily, and to them I now feed all passing thoughts and half-baked jokes that come up. It makes me wonder why I wasn't sharing as much with them the entire time.

As a new covid spike is hitting, I now confine myself to in-person interaction with family and just three friends. Everyone else I video chat, call, and text. These eight months have transformed me into someone who is used to a different level of stimulation than previously, but it acts as an evolutionary adaptation that allows me to survive. My social life is in hibernation, though other parts of me have come out to play instead. 

The necessary journey into introversion that we have all been ordered to undergo may be more reluctant for some, but for me it has felt like a triumph over my own mistakes in life. With my friendships in shambles before the real disaster even began, I had to reckon with brazen decisions to cast aside friends and reconcile with that very same person months later. I took routes to happiness that I would normally ignore and at this point, I’m glad I was forced to.