The Loss of Friendship

on missing the things I forgot I had

I’ve been craving friendship. Not just the kind of friendship between two people who tell each other their deepest secrets, but the the friendship of a group, a circle of friends who get together often and are loud and boisterous in bars and restaurants, who make good trouble together.

I’m a solitary person by nature; I’ve always been happiest by myself, at home. I’m not social by any stretch of the imagination, in fact I often turn down most social invitations and the ones I do accept I fret about until I inevitably cancel the day of. I like my alone time. I like not having obligations, not having checkmarks on my schedule.

I blame my newfound desire for being social on the pandemic. I may not have been much for bars and restaurants before last March, but I would give anything to be able to walk into one now. Before, I was staying home because I wanted to stay home. Now I’m home because it’s where I’m forced to be, where the times dictate I stay. Sure, I go to my office and the grocery store, but neither of those are social things. I have very little interaction with others at work, and in the grocery store I tend to stay far away from other people.

I miss friendship. I miss the social circles of my 20s when we’d gather almost every night to drink and dance and end up at a diner at 3am. I miss the camaraderie of high school, where every party, every get together in an abandoned house or mall restaurant was raucous and fun. I am so acutely missing doing things that I’m craving all that action from my youth. I want to go out and make noise. I want to be heard by someone other than my husband. I want to watch sports on ten different tvs while I struggle to be heard above the crowd and the music. I want to lean into a friend over drinks and tell them things I’ve told no one else, and listen to them tell me about their latest exploits, I want to share private moments in public places.

I crave people. Which is such a weird concept to me, the introvert, the one who holds back, who insists she doesn’t need anyone but herself. Being sheltered for so long has changed me drastically. I dream about big family gatherings where no one is masked and everyone is healthy. We laugh, we eat, we drink, we reminisce. They are good dreams, where not once do I panic about our close proximity or lack of masks.

I think about all the invitations I turned down, concerts I bailed on at the last minute, offers to go out to dinner that I declined. What I’d give now to be able to be social, to gather in close places and stay out too late and laugh all the way home. I miss the friendship that happens in those spaces, I miss talking to people face to face about the world and our lives, sharing our hopes and dreams or just talking about mundane things. I miss the proximity to other people, the ability to share a hug after a particularly profound conversation, the clinking of glasses together as we toast a special occasion.

These are all things that in the before times would cause anxiety, give me pause. It used to be that the thought of spending time with other people was a negative thought, that I’d push people away and decline so many invitations that I’d stop being asked. I used to shelter in my house because I wanted to, because that was my comfort zone. But now that I have to, now that the decision to be social has been taken out of my hands, I miss it. I miss people. I miss crowded restaurants where you stand shoulder to shoulder in a bar while waiting for your table. I miss concerts, singing and screaming in unison with hundreds of strangers and couple of good friends. I miss all the things I eschewed for so long. But most of all, I miss friendships that exist in a physical plane. I have online friendships and I’m grateful for those, but I want back the things I haven’t had in years; the meeting for coffee, the dinner at the beach, the talks that happen when you’re in each other’s space, when you can see the faces, feel the hugs.

I sit on my couch night after night, weekend after weekend, feeling like I’m retreating further into myself. I swear to myself that when this is all over - if it is ever all over - I will no longer be that recluse of a person I was before this. I will savor friendships, accept invitations, go to more concerts, more dinners out with someone besides my husband. I will remember all these things I crave right now and welcome them back into my life again. Until then, I will mourn the loss of all of these things I took for granted once upon a time, because it feels like friendships and social circles are dead.

Here’s to friendships and frivolities. May we see those times again.

[pictured: my daughter(r), my nephew, and a friend at a family gathering in 2018]