I decided to start writing this on a long weekend in Canada — one that happens to include two celebrations — Valentine’s and Family Day. I can’t help but feel like this is a double-pronged personal attack, since I have neither a Valentine nor a blood relation within 5,700km.
Almost a year ago — after a few months of joking about something called Coronavirus, meticulously planning trips in 2020 to see my nearest and dearest around the globe, and taking a day trip with friends to Buffalo, NY, not realising it would be the last time I would effortlessly leave Canada for almost a year — the VP of my team at work gathered us together in an office pod and very calmly announced that we would be working from home for three weeks. Next to me was my little wheely suitcase packed with clothes for a trip to NYC I was set to make that weekend, to run a half marathon and see three of my close friends who live there. I burst into tears immediately at my desk. The thought of three weeks of my own company with no other people to stimulate me was completely unfathomable to the very fibre of my being. I cried somewhat out of concern for my family in the UK — not only were borders rapidly closing making me feel immediately disconnected from home, but a quick phone call to my parents revealed they were gallivanting all round London that weekend with seemingly little concern about a killer virus. But mainly, I cried through concern for my own wellbeing for 3 weeks.
I don’t need to dwell on the obvious — 3 weeks at home in March 2020 was set to be the least of my problems. And to be completely honest, it’s not the distance from home and my family that has floored me emotionally for almost a year. Sure, I don’t love feeling far apart from my family during a pandemic, and I never signed up to a life abroad without the ease of being able to go home, but also — I chose that. I chose to live in another country and just before the start of the pandemic, I was used to not seeing my family. I’ve actually never really felt homesick living in another country. I’ve been too busy living my own life elsewhere, doing new things, having my own adventure, knowing I could make it home easily if I need to, depending on the state of my bank balance.
My life is, and always has been, filled with people, things, activities, travel. One autumn day in 2019 I raced a half marathon in the morning, then took 2 subways and a bus out of the city to make it in time for my choir rehearsal, with my medal round my neck. Everyone looked at me incredulously. I don’t remember what I did that evening, but there’s every chance I made it home to change and then met friends for drinks. And that’s always how I’ve lived my life — a mildly exhausting Tetris game of plans, activities, passions and people. It isn’t uncommon for me to go from a run, to a stand-up comedy class, to some volunteering, to a theatre show. I had a full life. I didn’t need it changed. But this isn’t even about that. I have got used to some of these things not being in my life currently, and I’ll be ready and willing to go back to whatever of my hobbies and interests are left when the world goes back to something like normal.
It took a period of enforced loneliness to realise how desperately I don’t want to be alone. People assume that much of my sadness and anxiety over the past year has come from being apart from my family during this time. Of course, that exists, and it will always be with me while I live here, especially as I’m very close to my family and have two nieces who occupy the biggest space in my heart. But what people don’t realise is that that particular sadness didn’t linger. My parents stopped their gallivanting, my sister took to home schooling. Everyone followed the lockdown rules and we bickered lightly about the rights and wrongs of how how to behave during a pandemic. I knew they were safe. I didn’t feel I needed to worry.
In actual fact, what has made much of this so difficult for me is that initially, there was so much talk of everyone being safe at home with their family, their loved ones, their significant other. I learned of colleagues so happy they were cooking dinner nightly with their partners, parents exasperated and yet there for every bedtime with their children, people ‘bubbling’ with their family, knowing they were all safe. The best part of the year went by with little to no mainstream comment on single people, people living alone, people who (shock horror!) at the age of 32 may not have found their better half. Only recently have I started to read articles that finally, finally speak to people like me and where I can feel like I’m not completely alone.
I read an article this week which was misleadingly framed around the absence of sex and physical intimacy during this pandemic. That’s a separate issue in itself, but it was sentences like the below that really struck a chord:
“the nuclear family has been the priority. The people who have bought houses, had babies, got pregnant, bought puppies. Everything else has been stripped away: this is what you should be doing.”
And then I saw the following Tweet:
“It is so hard being late 20s/early 30s and single right now. Life is on hold. The perks of being single have gone. It’s painfully lonely. And as a female there’s the biological clock guilt.”
Reading things like this makes me sigh with relief. If nothing else, it’s soothing to have your feelings validated. I do not deny or belittle the struggles of home schooling — and I cannot imagine what it must be like to have your children around all day, every day, while you try to work and be a parent in limited space, not designed for all these needs. I’ve seen it first hand via my sister when I was home in the UK for the holidays. But, and it feels unspeakably cruel to admit it, my sympathy has even waned there. My brain acts irrationally. It thinks ‘You don’t realise how lucky you are. You don’t realise how lucky you are to have met someone who is, presumably, the love of your life, and were able to meet, get to know each other, socialise, and have children before a pandemic. You are not wondering every day if you’ll be alone forever.’ The same goes for cancelled weddings — I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy — the financial uncertainty, the suspension of your plans, not knowing how to move forward. But my brain again — ‘You don’t know how lucky you actually are. You met someone who loves you and who you love back. I would trade anything for that right now’. Because it’s true — my life can’t help but feel a little empty with everything removed.
It’s horrible to feel guilt, shame and sadness at other people’s happiness. I want to be happy for my friends at their happiest time, but it’s unspeakably difficult to do so when you see that other people are able to advance their lives, at a time when yours feels inert, suspended in mid-air, on perpetual pause. I’m fairly sure I can count on more than one hand the amount of friends who have announced pregnancies during the pandemic. One in particular told me she was scared to tell me her news, knowing it would upset me. That made me feel terrible, and yet I didn’t know what to do about it, other than get straight on the phone to my therapist (many thanks to North America for somewhat normalising that concept!) Deep in my heart and on the surface, I’m happy for my friends who tell me their happiest news, tell me of their first, second, even third baby, but my day-to-day reaction is pain and sadness. Will I ever meet the love of my life? Am I in a race against time with my own fertility? Has society made me feel like the perfect route for women is to settle down and become a mother? What is the point of my life if not?
Everything that made my life great as a single person feels like it has disappeared — plans, activities, seeing friends whenever and wherever, travelling. I love my friends, and I’m lucky enough to have made many of them, thanks to the various avenues my life has taken me. But the ease of making friends couldn’t be more different to how impossible I find it to meet a man who I could love, and could love me back. I tell myself it might still happen. I might still have the life I think is my future. I could just do without a pandemic making meeting people almost impossible. My mum married my Dad at 19, and my sister married my brother-in-law at 26. Everyone remains happily married! I couldn’t be more of an outlier. My 7 year old niece asks me if I think I’ll ever get married, relatively often. She doesn’t know that I blink back tears, wondering the same, wishing there was something else I could achieve that would make me feel like I have value.
The truth is, I don’t want to be alone. I would love to be loved, to have someone with whom I could share my innermost thoughts, humour, fear and troubles. Someone who would be there for me, and make me feel like it’s not just me alone in the world. Often I find myself wishing I had met someone in my 20s, not rejected those people who could have given me what I now crave, or that things had worked out with the men who broke my heart, who made me cry, who couldn’t give me a reason. But, deep down, I know that wouldn’t be right either. At 32 I know, understand and appreciate myself a lot more than I did in the past decade. It just, apparently, didn’t take everyone else so long.
The reality is there really is no sign of when life will be normal again, and I’m edging ever closer into my mid-30s, with no guarantee about what will happen to all the social constructs I knew and loved. I am thankful to be healthy, to have a loving family, to have an amazing job and supportive colleagues, and to have so many wonderful friends who bring so much to my life. And I tell myself to stop wallowing. Of everything that has been lost during the past year, my troubles absolutely do not compare. But if I have to wallow, why not do it by writing.
