A Year in Quarantine Helped Me to Reevaluate My Stale Relationships
An Act of Self-Care as a Pandemic Exposes the Cracks in my Life.
We all have friends out of convenience. Like co-workers, or the people who hang out in the same places as you. Those people you’re missing during quarantine, but don’t have any real attachment to.
Friendships go stale.
We’ve all been there.
But what happens when your closest connections fizzle out?
This pandemic has us all re-evaluating our lives, our relationships, and what truly matters.
For me it has been a practice in letting go.
I hold onto things. Like waaayyy longer than I should. Not hoarder style, but small stacks around the house style. It’s healthy….ish.
The point is I don’t see it as a problem.
I tend to do the same with friendships. If I let you into my crazy little world, well there’s not a lot of options to exit. That is unless I decide I’m done.
Here’s what I mean…
I have never truly let go of my first love. I haven’t seen him in over 20 years and I can’t let him go. He’s a part of me, and so I choose to check in on him from time to time and remind him that I love him.
Don’t worry, much like my stacking of papers, it’s a healthy check in.
Or so I thought. I realized about five years ago that it was one way communication and I was introduced to the term “ghosting.” My mind was spinning.
Am I being ghosted?
I was the only one calling and maintaining any kind of effort to be in his life. Leaving messages mostly with no returned calls.
Oh. My. Gawd!
I am the crazy ex! How could this happen?
Let me tell you, sister, it happened because I can’t let things go.
So maybe it’s a little unhealthy.
After this hard hit in the face I started evaluating all my relationships. Most of the people in my life whom I make great effort to keep in my life have been in my circle for 20 plus years.
And these are all healthy relationships.
Life has changed them of course. Marriages, kids, divorces, all have had us ebbing and flowing in and out of each other’s lives, but these are my people. I know them and they know me. This is my crew.
Naturally when the pandemic put us into quarantine last March I did my part to reach out.
- I made things to drop off to their families.
- I did a May Day Wine Doordash.
- I sent postcards
- I send out videos
- I upped my social media game with comments and likes
- I had a list of people to check in on, both inner and outer circle to make sure everyone remembered how fabulous they are.
I was happy doing it too. I love this shit. It gives me something positive to focus on and these are my people.
Months dragged on and reaching out became less and less. Social media was exposing cracks in what I thought were solid relationships. Political noise divided us with nothing holding the glue of 20 years of friendship in place. Sitting at home in an effort to help stop the spread, I’d see friends out living their best life.
I was finding it hard to want to stay connected. Not because I wasn’t seeing eye to eye, but because without communication differences seemed to magnify.
Things got rough. The hardest part was the realization that my phone wasn’t ringing. My crew wasn’t checking in on me.
As my mind started to spiral into the self-worth trip I occasionally go on, I began to realize that some of my oldest and most treasured friends haven’t reached out one time in 8 months. In fact the only time I had any communication with them was when I was checking in on them. And, as my text scrolling pointed out, they didn’t even reciprocate any sentiment of concern for my well-being.
I felt broken.
I was being shown once again that I had been taping together relationships years after their expiration date. Leaving me feeling alone and left behind.
Every choice I ever made in life started to swirl within me as I filled with self-doubt.
- I’m not interesting enough
- I’m not relatable enough
- I’m not fun enough
- I’m not enough
NO.
Nope.
Not today quarantine.
You will not win this fight. I will not let this bring me down.
Deciding I’m not going to fall into depression I started taking a real review.
- I enjoy reaching out and connecting to people. It’s a reflection of who I am. All relationships are in our head anyway.
- My memory of these people won’t be tarnished by unworthy thoughts that simply aren’t true.
- Everyone is doing what they can right now just to survive.
- I have a great group of people on my quaranteam, and perhaps my thoughts are better spent there.
My Quaranteam
Using my daily breathwork practice I started to meditate on those on my quaranteam. An amazing array of humans who walk a similar path.
- A Friend who teaches me the value of friendship.
- A Mom who shows me what compassion for others looks like.
- A Sister who never worries about what others might think.
- A Teacher who helps keep my spirit in alignment.
- A Partner who reminds me to laugh daily.
As it turns out these are my people. They check in on me and me on them. Without realizing it I had my crew the whole time but was focusing on last season’s merch. instead of on this amazing group of humans who I’ve cultivated through the years.
I let them be who they are and they love and appreciate me for me. There is no pressure of holding on to them, and I don’t have to fight to make them work because they just work.
They aren’t stale.
This realization just about knocked me out. They had been there the whole time, but my focus had changed. No more foucing on the lack from old relationships.
A year in quarantine has helped me clear out what doesn’t serve me. From a job I hated to old friendships that were overdue to be shelved.
I have a huge capacity for love, and I know myself enough to realize I’m never truly done with anyone whom I hold dear. Will these lifelong friendships go away? No. They are just being re-categorized, leaving me room to grow more wholly into the person I’m becoming.
This is my thank you card to Covid. The pandemic that allowed me space to see where it was time to let go.
