“I’m Craving To Meet My Friends, But Terrified Too”

Last week my friend Kate had her first IRL work meeting since lockdown. ‘I’m sort of dreading it and desperate for it in equal measure,’ she said. ‘I feel like I need it to survive – but it also might be the end of my career?’

I could relate. Everything feels a bit life-or-death at the moment, social meet-ups included. Every time I meet up with a friend I feel as though the stakes are ridiculously high, and I might screw things up with just one false move. I guess a pandemic will make you that way. Anxious. Stuck in a paralysis of feelings. I’m having a problem with my social regulation.

I’ve been simultaneously craving intimacy and afraid of it. I’ve been feeling a strange sort of push and pull with my friends: an OTT neediness, often involving strings of messages declaring my overwhelming (true!) feelings about missing them; alternating with a gladness to be alone and have zero social engagements in the evenings and very few at weekends. ‘Phew,’ I think, ‘another beautiful blank space in my diary!’ Swiftly followed by: ‘I am floating alone and lost in a cold, godless universe aaaaarrrrgggh.’

That sort of thing. On an hourly basis. I’m like a yo-yo. Or someone really bad at dating. One of those guys who over-shares and then ghosts you.

It’s bizarre. And also, I think, probably quite logical. After all, we are living in times of real confusion – there’s still no overall guidance everyone is on-board with, or even clear on. The country has been in mixed states of lockdown in different areas, and still it’s changing. My family in Manchester and Lancashire couldn’t go to each other’s houses a few weeks ago. When I’m asked where we’re officially up to as a nation, I find myself stumbling the way someone who’s come out of a coma might when they’re asked what year it is, or who’s Prime Minister.

We’re double-thinking things that used to be simple and straightforward. Going into a shop or café, for example. (Mask? No mask? Card only? Is that table too close to mine?) Seeing someone we know on the street. (Hug? Elbow tap? Say we’ll meet up soon, and know this is a lie?) These conflicting thoughts battle for airspace in our heads. On top of the social fallout of coronavirus, we’ve got Brexit hanging over us like the Sword of Damocles. Deal or no deal? Is the Prime Minister about to do a runner? What the hell is happening with the American elections? Aaaaarrrrgggh.

That’s my word of the day. Aaaaarrrrgggh. It’s a good one.

I think the uncertainty and inconsistency is filtering down into the way we live our everyday lives. It’s hard to make plans or decisions. We don’t know how things will be in a week, a month, or a year, because we don’t know how things really are now. Everyone seems to be struggling with finding balance of whether to be really sociable or not. Where to meet, how to meet, if we even really want to meet. We have moments of feeling weirdly normal and then find ourselves having a freakout. We are all a bit traumatised by it all, and our friendships can’t help but be affected.

They say you need three things to sustain healthy friendships: consistency, positivity and vulnerability. Consistency might be gone, positivity might be thin on the ground, and vulnerability might be the only thing majorly in the mix – but hang in there, folks. And when in doubt, just say Aaaaarrrrgggh.