Up until now
Since the pandemic started back in March 2020, I’ve always welcomed the different stages of it with openness and resilience. Spring 2020 felt like a forced vacation, when everything was still new and exciting. Then came Summer and some measures were lifted, allowing for some fun, entertainment and even a bit of travelling.
When the cases started rising again in the Fall, I took this time to do some introspection and reflect on where I am at in my life and where I want to go. I welcomed the new year with a peacefulness in my heart and hoped to just continue to surf the wave of surprises for the year to come.
The new year started with its lot of changes. I wasn’t seeing any of my friends in person anymore, as I wanted to do my part to help lower the new cases and keep the people I love safe. The only people I continued seeing were my parents and sister who all live together. I started having many FaceTime dinners with my friends to compensate and even found it funny, as it reminded me of when I used to live abroad and kept contact with my close friends virtually. I also finally started working again after 10 months of being laid off and it felt great. Dressing up to go to the office in the morning had never felt so good. Things were not too bad.
However, not long after, the curfew and new measures arrived and I started working from home full time. At first I liked it. I could wake up a lot later, not having to commute to work, I could make myself a Nespresso coffee every morning and I could spend my days in comfy clothes. I have a huge capacity to adapt in general in life and this was no exception.
I felt so good. I was very happy with my life and I felt like I was ready to take on anything.
Then, everything fell apart
A few weeks after, however, it hit me. It hit me like a bomb I didn’t see coming. For 10 months I had dealt so well with the pandemic and the changes it brought, that I expected I was going to continue like that until things came back to normal. I thought my mental health was untouchable and that I was bulletproof. I didn’t know what hit me.
Turns out that being cut out from my friends completely, added to the working from home full time, and added to the fact that I live alone all became too much after a few weeks. I have never really felt lonely living alone. I’ve always LOVED living alone and the freedom it provides me. But at this point, this feeling of loneliness and sadness hit me like crazy. I was finally faced with the lack of human interaction in my life and I started not to be able to see the end of it anymore. Yes, I was still seeing my immediate family, but they don’t fill the same need, so it didn’t make a difference. The accumulation of all these factors made me reach rock bottom.
I cried. I cried SO MUCH. For days I cried my heart out. I felt like screaming. I couldn’t see the end of it. I couldn’t sleep anymore. I was exhausted and lonely.
I’m not saying that single people who live alone have it harder than anyone else. I think that we all have specific issues associated with our personal situation in this pandemic, but the lack of human touch is what finally got to me in my case.
I realized that I had never felt truly alone in my life. I’m a chatty person and easily make friends. Wherever I go or whatever I do, I always end up meeting people and making connections. Whether I’m at home or living abroad, I am never really alone. I appreciate my independence and my personal space, which is why I like living alone. But the truth is that in normal times, I am rarely home. I’m always out with some friends or family. I always have a distraction and I always find some human connection somewhere.
In the past months, the distractions had decreased, but I was always either going to work and seeing some colleagues or meeting up with a few friends still. I still had a tiny bit of human contact. When all of it got cut out of my life in the space of a couple weeks, I didn’t think that it would have this effect on me. That I would finally get to experience what feels like to be lonely. In all honesty, it’s one of the worst feeling I’ve ever experienced.
I consulted my therapist and she told me that I shouldn’t see this challenging time as a punch in the face. That this feeling of loneliness I was going through at the moment shouldn’t be seen as something negative, but rather as an ordeal that has something to teach me for the future. That there is a lesson here that I need to learn and that it presented itself to me at a moment when I was strong enough to handle it. And that something great was going to come out from this hard time. With only a few words, she managed to bring back my positive mindset and I felt relieved already.
What I realized
It has now been two months since I felt like this, and last night the feeling came back. This time, however, it felt familiar, so I welcomed it, knowing I could handle it. I also got a bit more clarity on what exactly was causing this feeling, since I found it strange that it would be back now that I am taking walks outside with my friends again. Why is this feeling still present?
The first thing I realized, is that, contrary to my friends, pretty much all aspects of my life were impacted by the pandemic. I lost my job for 10 months, while their jobs weren’t impacted at all. Because of that, my finances also became precarious, having very minimum revenue for an extended period of time, and still today, being only back to working part-time, while my friend’s financial means remained the same. My dating life was impacted, not being able to meet people as usual and choosing to see my friends rather than meeting some strangers. Almost all my friends are in relationships, so it was harder for them to relate. They had their challenges too, now being 24/7 with their partners, but they were different kind of challenges, which I couldn’t relate to.
Their life projects weren’t impacted as much. Buying a condo/house, adopting a dog, having babies… they all got to carry on with their big plans as usual. With me being single and an avid traveller, my life projects revolved around travelling, which is something I find difficult to live without even in normal life, as those who know me would confirm. It was hit, after hit, after hit and I felt so alone in this situation, the people surrounding me not being able to relate. I know it’s a matter of circumstances and that there are people in worst situations than me, but when everyone you know hasn’t been impacted as much, it makes you feel stuck and alone.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I felt sorry for myself. During this forced pause, I found new interests. I took some online classes, I started learning a new language, I read a lot of books, etc. It also allowed me to do a lot of work on myself and get some clarity on what I truly want in life. I’m grateful for that. What I’m saying is just that it felt lonely going through these challenges alone, with no one around me who could relate.
There is also another aspect to this feeling of loneliness that I got some clarity on. I stumbled on this article from The Independent, which describes exactly how I am feeling. I am craving some physical human contact. No, that doesn’t necessarily mean sex, it’s broader and more subtle than that. As they describe it, it’s more of a ‘’skin hunger’’ or ‘’affection deprivation’’, which would explain why walking outside with friends doesn’t fill this need. The article made me realize how much we have some subtle physical human contacts normally in life, whether it’s shaking a hand at work, or hugging a friend. In my case, it has been months since someone has touched me. I don’t hug my parents because I go on walks with friends, and I don’t hug my friends because I still see my parents. You don’t realize how much a lack of this human touch can have an impact on your mental health before you experience it. I definitely got a hard taste of it.
Today
I’m still learning how to cope with all of this. Most of all, I make sure to take some time to listen to myself and welcome these feelings as they come. And then I remind myself that it’s all temporary and that this too shall pass. Sometimes it’s hard to see the end of it, but it’s a good mindset challenge. When it hits me, I work on changing my mindset to a positive one… until the next wave hits. I’m hoping that as I get better at dealing with this, waves will hit less hard and less often. In the meantime, I’m determined to rise to the challenge.