Last Friday, while stifling the urge to scream into a pillow, I video-called my best friend and her husband — the only people I have managed to maintain daily contact with throughout lockdown.
They were watching the VE day programming on the BBC so I switched on the TV too. And for about half an hour, we all sat on two different sofas, in two different parts of the country, watching the same thing.
Without having to explain why or how, we gave up trying to drive a conversation about the slight variations in our daily monotony and instead experienced the calm feeling that comes from just having someone you love close by.
When conversation came we made fun of the same things, and of each other. We all ate chocolate and I had a glass of wine. We joked about stupid things. I laughed until I cried about nothing at all.
It felt normal. It was the best 30 minutes by far of the past 50 days for me. A touchstone to a former life and its idiosyncrasies that I so dearly miss.
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Because life isn’t like it once was. These days the edges of our imaginations are more closely aligned with the perimeters of our living spaces.
Screens, walls and borders have wedged themselves between us and the people we care about. The definition of ‘proximity’ is both greater and much more specific than it used to be (min. 2 metres).
Up until the moment I gave in and sat in silence with my best friend, I had been dodging people’s calls.
I had an intense desire to connect with another human being, but a complete lack of motivation to do so. I knew logically that speaking to those I love and interacting with people would make me feel better, but I felt completely exhausted by the prospect.
I’d stare at my phone screen willing my thumbs to find contacts in my phone book and press the call button. But I just couldn’t do it.
I’d avoid joining group Zoom meetings even knowing very well that the same calls would make me feel brighter. I missed my loved ones so much that it was almost easier not to be reminded of their existence.
I wondered if other people were feeling the same, so I asked Twitter. Many of you got in touch to tell me that you felt the same. What was the point in calling people when there was nothing to say? No good news. No optimism. No changes in our day-to-day routines.
Communicating with others is usually how I make sense of the world. Whether that’s via phone, face-to-face chats or through the words that I write in my articles — it helps me to feel connected. And so this shift felt even more alien and unexpected.
I’m good at talking, I like talking. So why did I now suddenly resent it?
It’s not something I’d ever experienced before lockdown. When the prospect of quarantine first entered our consciousness earlier this year, I thought, like many others I suppose, that the first part would be the hardest. Then, I thought, it would get easier as we changed and adapted to our new circumstances.
I’m good at talking, I like talking. So why did I now suddenly resent it?
In practice though I’ve found the opposite to be true. In the early weeks of lockdown, panic and the thick clouds of dissociation were at least punctuated by bursts of optimism.
Change often has an energising quality about it. I was hungry to discuss the impact of the pandemic with those around me. What did they think? What would happen? What did it all mean? How strange had life suddenly become?
And so I — and many others — set about making plans and grappling with new routines. We set up Zoom dates, pontificated about the headlines constantly served through our screens — we called our mates and our families all the time. In the first month or so, I think I spoke to everyone I love more frequently and honestly than I have in years.
And so I felt more connected too.
But then something shifted. The novelty wore off, and everything started to become extremely bleak. More and more people were dying. Key workers’ lives were being put at risk daily. Our prime minister was admitted to intensive care.
The prospect of leaving lockdown started to become more distant. Less tangible. The initial spurt of anxious energy had run its course and a palpable sense of exhaustion was all that was left in its place.
What began as fatigue soon became listlessness.
But communicating with my best friend without speaking helped me realise something important: intimacy — real intimacy — isn’t about making conversation about current affairs. It’s not asking and answering questions about different ‘interesting’ topics.
In normal life, most of what we say to one another is just observational. We respond to the stimulus that day-to-day life provides us with. We react to it together, and make sense of it. It brings us together.
And so it makes perfect sense that when there’s none of that, we feel less inclined to speak.
The night that we spoke, my best friend and I crossed a threshold, I think. Every day since then, we’ve given ourselves and each other permission to start a phone call without any intention of sharing information.
And if one of us doesn’t want to speak, well then we just sit quietly. Last night, we even did our respective food orders online over the phone.
‘Did you put butter on your order?’ she asked.
‘Yep — got it’, I replied.
This morning she called me so I could watch her read a story to her one-year old daughter. We laughed at her goofy reactions and then hung up. I went back to my day and so did she.
It’s these reminders of intimacy that make me feel most alive during lockdown. I don’t miss the grand debates about the world so much as the mindlessness of comparing purchases after a trip to the shops with a friend.
Discussions over what we should cook for dinner. Collective bitching over someone who pissed us off at the pub before lockdown.
What hurts perhaps the most is not knowing when these more innocuous aspects of life will return.
But until then, I’ll have to make do with watching my friend hoover her living room while I sing along to a song on the radio on the other side of a screen.
Do you have a story that you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk
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source https://metro.co.uk/2020/05/12/run-things-say-12692096/
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