Inside the human mind is a strange and wonderful place. Humans are social creatures: we are designed to support one another, not to exist alone. These last few months have brought this to the top of consciousness in a way I never expected.
I spent this last weekend at a writer's retreat. It was not a con - and certainly not a con by the time the thing had to be rescheduled due to mass isolation, then limited in number due to many people being unable to travel - but what it was was people getting together. I had been looking forward to it for more than a year. I try not to complain about it, but I suspect my regular readers know that I have my family (who I love very much, but... I'll come back to this in a minute) and that's it, in physical local proximity. This is, even for an introvert, difficult.
The First Reader is an obligate introvert. He doesn't even do well at cons for three days, when he likes the people there and wants to be there. He gets peopled out much earlier than I do. But he does have a close friend we get to see a couple of times a month, and the two of them will sit and chat for hours. The First Reader, for all he is an island to himself, needs this limited social interaction. Almost all human beings do better with some social, even us hyper-adjusted to the modern world where you just don't have the kinds of 'belonging' that our ancestors did.
I was doing research on the effects of long-term social isolation and loneliness early this year. I was having a rough time, and I knew some of it was my own lack of having friends I could talk to. Truly talk to. One of the things I remarked on about the writing retreat was the ability to have a conversation about anything and everything without having to filter myself. I could trust the people I was talking to. Not that I was going to censor bad language or badthink... no. I could trust them to understand me, without the need to explain. I could and we did! discuss darn near any topic under the sun. There was banter, there were jokes, there were serious scientific conversations. It was glorious. And now I am back at home and again contemplating those effects of loneliness. My children are my children. We are reaching a point in our lives where we can have amazing conversations, but they are not yet fully adult and I am still their mother, not just a friend. I shall always be their mother. My husband and I can and do spend a lot of time in one another's company and enjoy it. Still.
We are going to see, in the fallout from the lockdowns, the toll it took on the mental and even physical health of those who were forcibly isolated during this time. Online interaction (and that, for those who were able to have it, as many were not) is insufficient. It helps. Oh, I know it helps. I spent years where that was my only option. It wasn't until I was able to have the in-person friendships once a year or so that I saw the difference. The difficulty is that most of our society is, if not extroverted, unused to the isolation. It's not an easy thing to live with. I know this from decades of personal experience.
Even when it all lets up. Well, most folks will return to something approaching a normal routine for them. I'm going to go back to what I was trying to figure out before the lockdown: how do I make friends and find people I can connect with in person without having to move? I can't uproot the family for a minimum of three years. After that, all bets are off because I want to be healthy and whole and that means I need to put myself into some kind of proximity to my tribe.