How the pandemic made it possible to have honest conversations about loneliness

As fun as summertime can be, it can also bring up a *lot* of different feelings: endless scrolling past posts of other people’s friend-filled holidays can bring up a bit of loneliness alongside the more typical social media-inspired envy. But - as The Know writer Julia Hernandez explores - one unexpected impact of the pandemic is that it’s been much easier to be honest about loneliness. In this piece, she discusses her hopes for continued vulnerability. 

I’m sitting across the table from a high school friend in a cozy, low-lit pub. I haven’t seen her since we graduated four years ago, but it’s the sort of friendship that always picks up right where it left off. In this particular catch-up session, we’re dissecting the dynamics of our social lives - both our overlapping ones from high school and our divergent experiences at universities an ocean apart.

Her eyes flick to the corner of the low ceiling. She chews over a thought, trying to find the right words. 

“I don’t know… I used to think it was a ‘me’ problem that I struggled to make many friends in high school, or when I got to university. But I’ve realised over time that it’s just an issue of circumstance.”

I nod, recognising her story in my own. I attended three different high schools, moving internationally twice within four years. At each new institution, I faced tough hurdles to making friends - especially at the international schools, where students are so used to peers shuffling in and out as they repeatedly move abroad that old-timers barely bat an eye when new blood walks through the door. They don’t like making friends that might be gone by next year. 

I was lucky to have a few close connections - but always felt awkward when I scrolled past Instagram posts of classmates at parties with dozens of smiling guests, arms wrapped around each other in communal bliss. If I’d tried to throw a party back in high school, I probably couldn’t scrounge up more than 10 invitees - and that would include some pretty flimsy acquaintances.

When I got to university, living in my family home rather than student accommodation set me apart. It felt like a punch in the gut when I realised that the closest friends I’d made in my first few months of uni were having raucous nightly dinners with all of our mutual friends that were living in the student block. At that time, I was spending nearly every weeknight inhaling popcorn while watching a cheesy Netflix reality show alone in my room.

I worried compulsively that I was fundamentally unlikeable. Why was it so hard for me to make friends, and seemingly so easy for everyone else?

It took me a long time to realise that there’s no “everyone else” - an astounding number of people feel exactly like I do. Some of them might even look at my Instagram posts, which frequently feature my sisters, my cousins, international friends from my many moves abroad, and think that I’ve got a huge community to rely on. In many ways, they’re right. I’m lucky to have lots of lovely people in my life. But they’re scattered across different contexts - different places and different chapters - which sometimes leaves me feeling lonely in my daily life. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve entered a crowded room and feared that everyone would notice I had no one to talk to there, no group that would claim me. 

I’m struck by how strange that is: I wasn’t necessarily worried about the fact that I had no one to talk to. I was worried that people would notice - that they would see me and think “look: a loner.”

That’s one concern I’m desperate to leave behind. In university and in high school, it felt so viscerally embarrassing to be spotted by yourself. An illustrative memory comes to mind: in my first year of university, a classmate leaned over to me during a lecture, pointed to the girl sitting in front of us, and hissed “oh my god look - she’s alone.” The reigning assumption was that being alone meant that no one wanted your company. And that, of course, meant that there was something wrong with you.

But the pandemic has levelled the playing field. It completely deconstructed our social lives. Removing us from offices and school study halls - the sorts of places that generate casual acquaintances - made less important relationships mostly melt away. As people desperately tried to contend with a world in turmoil around them, they had less energy to maintain friendships. And for those of us who started new jobs or schools while cloistered at home, having “work friends” or “university friends” feels like a foreign concept, folklore from a world that’s not your own. 

At the pub, my friend tells me about her little brother, who moved to a London international school in the middle of the pandemic. “It was so hard for him to make friends,” she recounts. “They had to walk down the hallways and eat in the dining hall two metres apart. Masks were on all the time. How can you possibly meet people like that?” The story instantly evokes my fear of looking alone in a crowd - everyone looks alone if you’re all standing two metres apart. 

The pandemic created so many structural challenges around maintaining an active social life. And it made it possible to be honest about that. Since 2020, I’ve had tonnes of honest conversations with friends and family about how lonely we are, how few friends we feel we can rely on. Once upon a time, it would have felt mortifying to say that I didn’t have a large social circle. Now, it’s commonplace. I would’ve once felt nervous to admit that I’ve ‘resorted’ to meeting people on Bumble BFF (totally recommend it, BTW) - now I gladly announce that I’ve met some truly amazing women through the app. It’s as if we once expected people to believe that our communities are effortless - we hoped to appear frozen in a time of social abundance, with no evidence of the work it took to make the friends that we have.

It’s given us a vocabulary - a limited one, but a lexicon nonetheless - to express that making friends is hard. Ending up without a large circle isn’t a personal failing. Often, you’re not in the right place at the right time. In high school, I wasn’t in the right spots. In university, I didn’t start off in the right one either. That’s ok. Better times will come.

My hope going forward is that we hold on to vulnerability - that we protect, honour, and foster it. I don’t want to go back to being embarrassed about not knowing tonnes of people. The shame doesn’t do us any good.