POST-COVID FRIENDSHIPS

People often say, "your circle gets smaller with age". I neither understood nor ever believed in it because why? Isn't it's supposed to be the opposite? You grow up, move universities, move cities, move jobs, more moving, more people and more potential friends, right? And it was all going right for me, but then Covid happened. The world and the moving paused for a long while. It affected us in ways we had never imagined in our wildest of dreams. Lives changed, lifestyles changed, priorities changed, factors affecting our decisions changed, we changed.

Covid not only took many a life but also took away our zeal to be alive, our zest to connect, and our spirit to stay in touch. It was all fine at the start, but eventually, it got so dark and gloomy that even these social media apps couldn't keep the social in us alive. I was a super-social being. Social to the point that it was annoying. 70% of my day pre-covid constituted of hanging out with friends, catching up with the ones far away, and checking up on the ones going through a rough phase. I never cared if I was the only one driving a friendship because it's friendship. It's supposed to be easy. And now, I have to schedule calls with the very few friends I am left with one week in advance. Which I am not going to lie, I dread taking until I actually start talking to them.

I didn't exactly stop checking up on people, but I had to take a break. And I think everyone else had to too, and so my circle shrank. Another reason for that to happen was an olden saying, "out of sight, out of mind." As I mentioned earlier, factors affecting our decisions changed. I made certain decisions that drove me out of sight from 90% of my friends, leaving me out of their minds too. I don't think friends ever stopped loving each other, but everyone is so drained, exhausted and out of energy that keeping in touch, which was previously a leisurely activity now, seems like a real pain in the ass. I hope we do not get accustomed to this, and may our circles never shrink.

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