The relational damage of this season is not lost on anyone. It is wide and it is deep. For the extroverts who live by themselves it may look like deep loneliness that comes from isolation. For the introverts at home 24-7 with their children it may look like the state of constant over-stimulation and feelings of suffocation. It hits hard on Sunday mornings when we long for face-to-face fellowship and communal worship and instead find ourselves battling with kids who have little interest in listening to a “grown up message” on the TV yet again. Sure, we have Facetime and we have Zoom. But it just isn’t the same.
We long for hugs and for looking into people’s actual eyes, reading their body language and truly doing life together.
But we expected this. The moment they closed schools; the instant the “Shelter in Place” was issued, we saw that this would be one of the huge costs.
But in the past few weeks, there is another relational challenge that I have encountered that I honestly did not see coming.
You see, here in Georgia, our governor was one of the first in the nation to announce a “calculated and incremental return to normalcy.” He gave the go ahead for restaurants and salons, bowling alleys, and movie theaters to begin to reopen. There were restrictions and protocols that needed to be followed, but this was the beginning of a return to normalcy.
In downtown Atlanta, a friend described people flooding into the streets to celebrate. People celebrated everything from being able to get their roots colored to being able to go back to work. But not ALL the people. Many of the people shouted from inside their shelters: “It’s too soon.” “We are not ready!” They dug their feet in deeper, worried about another spike. And so, with this announcement, the disagreements and the divisions were exposed and taken to another level. The rift became wider. Relationships got trickier. The collateral damage started growing.
In the past few weeks, the feeling in the pit of my stomach that I felt at the beginning of this whole mess has returned. The uncertainty has felt more tangible than it has for over a month. And the relational challenge has shifted from “I miss my people” to “how do I love my people who are handling this differently than I am?”
And actually, this second pain, for me, is far more difficult that the first.
For the first four weeks of this, as the “shelter in place” order was over us, there was a sense of comradery. We were all going through the same thing and could empathize with one another about how hard it was in every way. None of us chose where we were, but we were in it together. And that unity fostered love and compassion.
But now, that order is gone. We have been given the freedom to choose again. And that choice is hard. And that choice is divisive. We are all emerging from our cocoons, our “distanced fellowship”, our “distanced unity”, and we are moving in seemingly opposite directions. And that movement has more relational implications than I ever could have imagined. I figured, I HOPED, we would eventually get out of this mess, but I didn’t think through what that exodus would look like.
Deciding what we are going to do with the freedom we have in this moment is perhaps harder than almost any decision we have ever had to make as individual members of a single nation. And we already see how it is getting ugly. All I have to do is look at the threads in my neighborhood email chain to see people getting arguing passionately over whether or not people should be wearing masks in public. We all have our opinions, and many of those opinions are strong.
To make things worse, there is a complicating factor that is really an amplifying factor. What we have all gone through in the last two months and what we are continuing to go through is one big trauma. And no one is their “best self” in the midst of a trauma. Our emotions are high. Our reactions are strong. We are tired. We are cranky. We are angry for what we have gone through. We are angry for what we are still going through. We feel suffocated. We feel silenced. We feel scared. We feel SO DARN MUCH! So, for us to all think and act compassionately AND wisely in this moment is a tall order.
I think we are all feeling it. But we feel it in different ways. I have ideas of how people on the other side of the street are feeling it, but all that is just conjecture. So, all I can do is speak for myself.
While our family has decided it is wise to continue to practice social distancing and to limit our contacts to family members, many, if not most of my friends have begun to open up to varying degrees. No one is going crazy and running around hugging strangers in the aisles of Target, but with each person they invite into their circle, I find myself taking one step back.
And I hate it.
I hate feeling like I have to have a DTR (“defining the relationship”) with everyone who comes near me: “Hey, so I am still social distancing!” I feel like I have this invisible 6-foot bubble around me that I am constantly making sure no one unintentionally invades. Part of me thinks I need to wear a sign around my neck whenever I am out in public announcing my position in this moment. And I hate that.
I hate the things I am missing out on. It makes me sad every time a group text comes through seeing if anyone wants to meet up for a playdate at the park. I feel like I need to respond: “Sorry, we can’t. We are still staying away from people… and from parks.” But I know I don’t have to,… because they know. But it still feels lonely. Because everything in me wants to go play at that park. Everything in me doesn’t want to feel left out. And I hate it.
And most of all I hate how I feel like with each passing day of “them being together” and “me being on the outside” that somehow, I am being forgotten. It feels like the virtual grip that was so tight before this, and even tighter in the midst of this, is loosening. And though I know it is irrational and untrue, what it feels like is that any day now that final finger will slip from my grasp and they will be gone. And that, THAT is what I hate the most.
Am I alone? Do you see it too? Do you feel it too?
I would love to tie this all up in a pretty little bow. I would love to tell you we just need to hang in there a couple more weeks and things will get better. Getting through this and getting through it well is going to take time and it is going to take a whole lot of hard work. It will take vulnerability and courage to communicate well. It will take empathy and compassion to truly see each other’s hearts. And most of all, it will take love, the real, deep, getting down in the mud with others kind of love. And I think if we are willing to do the work, we can do it. And if we do, WHEN we do, I know relationships will survive, and perhaps through it all, even grow stronger.
So, hold on my friends, and be ready to fight. Because this fight—the fight for the people you love, will always be worth it!
Ruth
abrisbois