friendship in quarantine

Post-tutorial, I sat on the phone with a friend for a few hours whilst I coloured and we chatted about corona and books and our feelings. She asked me how I'd be finding friendship in lockdown, and I replied that in all honesty, its been a bit odd. So much of friendship is built on shared experience, and obviously the pandemic has put a stop to that. I've read a lot of 'dating in lockdown' articles, which I find generally entertaining, and sometimes perplexing, but weirdly not much about friendship. But it sure has been weird.

The fatigue of Zoom is mounting, and after 10 weeks, I am craving some real-life social contact. A 2D pixilated image just doesn't quite cut it, when all you want to do is hug your friends. I've had some warming and loving hours spent on FaceTime, when I'm reminded just how lucky I am, but after I've closed my laptop and am in my silence, I'm often left feeling just a little sadder that they can't be here with me.
And sometimes it feels I've got nothing left to say, can only ask so many times how someone is or reply with the usual 'oh you know, getting through'. I sometimes worry I've forgotten how to socialise properly. Somewhere I read that you shouldn't ask a virtual chirpse how their day is because 'newsflash: it was probably as boring as yours', and whilst I actually do like this question and the care and interest it suggests, the implicit message that nothing much is happening to anyone carries a lot of weight. And it really doesn't bode well for dynamic conversation. For me, the topics are predominantly either corona or work. Both are undoubtedly of some interest, but god I'd like an hour of post-night-out gossip or hysterical laughter. I feel like I'm definitely not laughing as much.
All this virtual communication has also highlighted just how much conversing exists beyond the language used. Movements, pauses, expression cannot be discerned through a screen - without them conversation can be stilted or endlessly overlapped. With so many of my friends, I love their presence as much as their conversation but silence doesn't carry the same comfort when translated over the internet. Of course, we all know how 'lucky we are' to be in the age of the internet and to be able to see and talk to those we miss and man I couldn't have got through with out it, but boy its also a lot and no real comparison for real life!

I'm also finding some of the expectation of communication exhausting, that the friendship has become virtual and exists solely online can be empty and unrewarding, but that not speaking to them also feels empty and makes me worry I'll lose them. Everyone is available all the time, but such an expectation creates a weird paradox of both being overwhelmed and madly lonely.
Last week, I deleted most of my social media and god it was relieving to just exist in this space. Little feels tangible the moment and sometimes talking to people who aren't really there simply perpetuates this disassociation. But, I then felt sad, because no one had messaged me and the lockdown loneliness ensued. Yikes!
I found a random shitty tweet a few weeks ago along the lines of 'remember who isn't replying to you at the moment and what this shows about whether they care' and I've thought a lot about the expectation this puts on people. Replying can be exhausting and draining and god, sometimes I just want to leave it a few hours or a few days, and really, does it matter?
There's an immediacy and a constancy to lockdown friendship, in a bizarrely transient and distant way. It's both there all the time and not there at all. It makes you feel both full and empty, loved and lonely. And I simultaneously want to spend no time on my own, and all my time on my own. Does anyone else get this?

This madness has, however, also imbued some beautiful strength and longevity to relationships. It's made me reach out to old friends more and spend more hours talking to my g's who I don't get to see, corona or not. It's led to notes in the post, and cakes on doorsteps, and book suggestions and unexpected phone calls and messages saying they love you. It's made me think a lot about who matters the most to me, and what I value in friends.

Last week I had a bit of a meltdown that I didn't think I could see my friends again, that I'd forgotten how to socialise, wouldn't enjoy it, wouldn't know what to say. Obviously, this was irrational angst. It doesn't really matter what I say or do, just seeing them will be enough. But I definitely think there is an unspoken weirdness to friendship in quarantine. An empty intensity that leaves you both connected and lonely, and mostly just reinforces how much you long for something like normalcy.

yearning

This week has been a bit stifling. I am, for the first time, really craving independence and freedom. I've always loved home, love coming home, and in my year out I didn't really feel I wanted to escape, even though it was predominantly me and my parents and not much other entertainment. But now more than ever I am feeling the need to break free. I've tried changing my walks, running further and further, to new places, but I still feel confined. Its been 9 weeks, and now I am yearning to live on my own and just be in my own space and thoughts and time. Home is quiet and calm and really very nice, but I just want to be back on my own. I've looked into renting a room in Ox for a month over the summer. I don't even really care if any of my friends are in the city, I just want to be able to walk in the meadows and do my own food shop and ring home with updates, rather than having the same conversations everyday over breakfast. I know living alone in a pandemic absolutely would not be this idyllic, and I'd probably get stuck and lonely and want to come home, but in my head, for 4 blissful sunny weeks, it feels like the dream. So maybe that can happen, although what's the point of planning ahead any more?
I've thinking about the phrase the 'new normal' and how everyone says they want life to go 'back to normal' and how much I really fuckin' don't want normality because now this is the normal. Everything is so known in a totally unknown world and my surroundings feel worn out and overdone. You know what every day is going to bring, everywhere you are going to go, that you'll wake up the next day and nothing will have changed. There are no surprises, just the moment of bliss when you wake up before you think 'for fuck sake' and remember the crisis. I want change and excitement, not anything with a semblance of normality.

So I'm feeling a bit stifled and a bit trapped. My city is beautiful and the moments when I'm out running and its sunset are magical or when we drive to the country for a walk and I'm giddy at the change of scenery, but god I just want something new. I want to be away from my parents (lol) and living my own life and making my own decisions, and I just want something to be surprising. It sure is such a strange dichotomy, that in a world so wildly uncertain, where no sense of the future exists, can feel so fuckin normal and boring. 

Is anyone else feeling this !

the read and the to-read

Mondays have, blissfully, become my days off. Snatched time between panicked essay writing and opening up my reading list to start the next week of work. I do actually have a tutorial and a meeting today, but the rest of the day is for myself. The empty time spent at home is so different to that in Oxford, neither better nor worse. Here it is spent on my own, reading or watching Normal People or calling my friends or walking. At Oxford its almost always filled with the jobs I didn't have time to do (Tesco, washing, post-office) and then probably the pub. I'm trying to see this new slower pace as a chance to catch up with myself.
There's been a lot more time to read, and because my screen time on my laptop has been exponential, I've been trying to make myself do it more. I've read quite a lot of good stuff, and there are a few books I'm looking forward to buying or borrowing when I get a chance. I've also started writing in my books a lot, I think perhaps its fallout from my degree, but its nice to look back and see what I found pertinent at the time. On another note, this post from Eleanor is excellent to find non-Amazon places to buy your books in the time of Corona.

(Brideshead Revisited was sent to a friend to remind her of Oxford, the Go-Between made its way to Italy for my friends birthday, along with a list of things to 'look out for')

Read:
Atonement, Ian McEwan – okay, I didn't really like Atonement. I don't even remember it that well. To me, it felt like a diluted version of The Go-Between, with the same almost claustrophobic rising  pressure, culminating in a pivotal and destructive event that will change the whole course of the book. But, I didn't much like the characters and didn't really live up to the reviews ('smoulders with slow-burning menace', 'brilliantly explores the currents of guilt, shame and anger...utterly satisfyingly complete'). In terms of McEwan, I thought The Children's Act was far more powerful and the character development much more evocative.

Girl, Woman, Other, Bernadine Evaristo– oh, I loved this. I'd been wanting to read it ever since my tutor mentioned it and treated myself after my last essay. It follows 12 different (kind of intertwined) black women and their experience of racism and feminism in Britain. It seems to cover every kind of life experience you could imagine, and I love the way they are all subtly connected. I did find some of the characters more compelling than others, but they were all deep and powerful and wildly eye opening. Its one of those clever books that manages to tackle the heavy realities in a readable and page-turning way. Would highly recommend.

Late in the Day, Tessa Hadley - this was another post-essay treat. If I'm honest, I just liked the cover, but it turned out to be so good. Much of the plot happens in the first few pages, but its the intricacies of their relationship that are so powerful. The way she builds jealousy and contempt and complicated spiky connections between people feels so real. As with so much fiction at the moment, it doesn't use speech marks – as a concept, I am apathetic  but I think it kind of works in this? It means you focus on the characters and the sentiment of what is being said so much more than the words.
"...guileless and voluble, transparent in this moods, sometimes he sank deep into himself and needed to be alone for a few hours" 
"...for who would care about their passion in three hundred years?"
"...if I try to imagine eternity, I think it might feel like an English pub on a Saturday afternoon" 

The Veiled Woman, Anaïs Nin - this was sort of hilarious to read, and sort of amazingly transgressive. Its 4 different pieces of quasi-erotica (?). They were written in the '40s (and published in the '70s) which feels madly radical considering their content, and surely marks some kind of feminist victory. Some are weird and uncomfortable, but others are uncharacteristically liberal and free. I love it for the radicalism of a woman writing so openly about transgressive sex in the 1940s, and the language and description is beautiful. Maybe not one to recommend to your mum though lol.

The Beekeeper of Aleppo, Christy Lefteri - Oh, man I loved this! My mum picked it up for me in Sainsbury's (yeh, I was immediately sceptical), but not only is it sensationally written but its also so sobering. You realise how easy this pandemic is for so many of us. How we're safe at home with our books and our furlough schemes and how endlessly destructive life is for those in Syria and other war zones. I love how it alternates between past and present. Its wonderfully easy to read but the language is beautiful and would totally recommend it, especially right now.
"...when she was sad my world was dark. I didn't have a choice about this. She was more powerful than I. She cried like a child, laughed like bells ringing, and her smile was the most beautiful I've ever seen. She could argue for hours without ever pausing. Afra loved, she hated, and she inhaled the world like it was a rose. All this was why I loved her more than life"
"But what I loved most was her laugh. She laughed like we would never die"
"...it makes my sadness feel like something palpable, like a pulse, but it makes me afraid too, afraid of fate and chance, and hurt and harm, of the randomness of pain, how life can take everything from you all at once"
"If only we had known what life would bring. But if we had known, what would we have done? We would have been too afraid too live, too afraid to be free and to make plans"

To-read:
The Flatshare, Beth O'Leary – this is another Sainsbury's buy, but I wanted something trashy – apparently its similar to Normal People. If I'm honest, any kind of page-turning romance will do, but I just want something deliciously addictive and mindless.

Sweet Sorrow, David Nicholls – ever since I heard him talking about this on the High Low last summer, this has been on my list. It's a summer love story of two 16 year olds, an exploration of first love and heartbreak. It doesn't come out in paperback until the summer, which perhaps is a good thing because I'm not sure my brain has the space of a Nicholl's young love story whilst I'm stuck inside, but either way – I love his writing and him in general, so I know it'll be good.

Why I'm no longer talking to white people about race, Renni Eddo-Lodge – i've been wanting to read this for years, but after my tutor recommended it last week in our feminism tute I know I need to get my hands on it. I think it'll be the next socially distant exchange with my friend.

And now I am left with a few empty hours on my hands, and a chai latte to drink. I might knit, my jumper halted a few weeks back when I made a catastrophic mistake, and now I'm not sure I even like the colour any more. Or maybe I'll crochet, I'm trying to teach myself to do something more useful than just make squares, but it'll never compete with Eleanor's, that's for sure.

Let me know what you've been reading, and any recommendations you have!

musings #9

I love the colours of this weeks moodboard. Its funny, I never intentionally save things with a theme in mind, but there sure is a blue-y, spring like quality to these pictures. They feel vibrant and hopeful, which is a nice contrast to the mood of my brain. I especially adore the Van Gogh. It makes me think of summer days abroad and picnics. What i'd do to have one of those on the horizon. Of course, there are also numerous pictures of Oxford taking up my insta at the moment. I still get a warmth in my stomach when I turn the corner to see those layered buildings, it sure does make me happy. I'm dreaming of the day I can stroll along the streets and sit in a creaking library. 

Its been an anxious one, y'all. I've cried and read in almost equal amounts, my days have been spent either working or worrying, both of which feel unfulfilling. My health anxiety is horrifically overwhelming, which makes sense considering the global climate, but it is uncontrollable, especially without access to my usual coping mechanisms. So i've sort of had to just sit and be with the thoughts, which is horrible and scary. But hey, who's really having a ball in this pandemic?

Other than worrying, I've written a lot of letters, painted a lot of watercolour flowers, done the same walk at 11am for 7 days in a row, started Brideshead Revisited to vicariously experience Trinity term, spent hours on Zoom, a night doing a jigsaw because it was the only thing that could put my mind at rest, and not much else. Oh, I've taken a lot of pics on PhotoBooth. I guess to remember all the hours I spent at my desk procrastinating?

This week I really am hoping to get back into hobbies, and want to fill my grey time a little more productively so my brain can't spiral so catastrophically. I'm thinking journalling, painting, puzzling, running, reading. The things I know make me feel good but get neglected in the blur of this madness. 

In other equally mundane news, I've been spending a lot of time on Seol+Gold looking at rings. I really want a thick silver band, but am undecided on design and size - they have too many ! I'm also finding myself being lured into a consumeristic trap, which is difficult when a) most of my clothes are trapped in Oxford b) my student loan came through and c) I need some incentive to work. But I am resisting, and trying to raid my sisters wardrobe instead. I also did a (socially distant) book and puzzle swap with my friend the other day and, not only will it keep me sufficiently occupied for a few weeks, but it was also so refreshing to see a new face. Eek!

Drink up some of the sun and the colour of the pics, soon we'll be out there enjoying it. 

(pics are:

@lesparisiennesdumonde @spiralling_oxford @vangoghmuseum @marcello_velho @charlotte.ager @mansfieldoxford (<3) @seolgold @refinery29 @seolgold @maddierothart @making.me