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.