I have a new message on my phone. A group chat I'm part of (in theory).

I have not yet opened this new message.

I've hovered my thumb over the message a few times. I've read the message preview. I've even strongly considered the possibility of, at some undisclosed future moment, pressing on the message and reading it.

But here is my dilemma. It's a message on Facebook messenger. So even though I do want to read it, if I open it, then…

They'll all know I've read it.

And right now this feels like an insurmountable barrier.

So I do what I've done multiple times already this morning. I close the messenger app, and I put my phone back down.

This is the opening of my latest ABC piece - 'Why the pandemic makes it harder to feel like you belong'

In truth, I found belonging hard even before we were all trapped inside not seeing our friends. 

As I write in the piece: 

For as long as I can remember, I've found it hard to feel like I belong in groups.

Social events have always been a source of angst. When I have something on my calendar — even something small — I'll often spend days thinking about it beforehand. Expending all kinds of energy picturing the thing — how it'll be, whether I'll enjoy myself — before eventually going along and having a perfectly nice time.

I like socialising. I just never seem to remember that I do.

The Zoom paradox

In many ways, lockdown has lowered the bar for socialising. Simply flip open your laptop, and you’re there. And yet, for me it seems, I have just as much angst about a Zoom call as I would about a real life hangout.

Who’s going to be there? Will I have anything interesting to say? What if I want to leave after five minutes, how awkward will that be??

Paradoxically, the Zoom era has also made it easier to wiggle out of things. No one has put in any great effort to host, so if at the last minute you don’t show up, who will really care?

I have every intention to stay in touch with my friends at the moment, but I am struggling to actually do it. And it’s been making me feel like a shit friend.

The floodgates have opened (extremely slowly)

This past week, things have looked very different. I went to three separate Zoom group hangouts, all in one week, having spent the last several months avoiding them completely.

It’s like the floodgates have opened. All of a sudden I’m a video chatting fiend.

But on closer inspection, it didn’t happen all at once. This newfound sociability was in fact a slow and somewhat excruciating process.

An innocent to-do list item

It started with me writing on my to-do list: ‘go to this week’s Wednesday Night Zoom hangout’. 

That was about three weeks ago.

When the next Wednesday rolled around, I happened to have a reasonable excuse not to go. So of course I didn’t.

Then soon enough it was Wednesday again. (How is it always Wednesday again?)

All day that innocent to-do list item (‘go to the Wednesday Night Zoom Hangout’) was staring at me from my notebook like one of those paintings with the eyes that follow you across the room.

Come night time, I was watching the clock like a hawk. 

The Zoom hangout starts at 7pm. By 6pm, I was reasonably sure I was going to go. I ate dinner nervously, thinking about what I’d say if anyone asked where I’d been for so long.

By 7pm, the Zoom call was starting, and I wasn’t in it. 7.30, the same. By 8pm, I’d actually managed to set up my laptop, click into the waiting room and stare at the little preview image of myself. 

I certainly looked like someone about to join a Zoom call, I thought.  

But I couldn’t shake the feeling I’d arrive in the call just as everyone was logging off (after a great, nourishing conversation I’d had no part in). I imagined one or two friends sticking around out of pity, just so I didn’t feel bad. 

Oh the shame.

I closed my laptop. I did not join the call.

Wednesday Night Zoom, take 3

When my third opportunity rolled around a week later, things were feeling pretty dire. 

That to-do list item (‘go to the Wednesday Night Zoom’) now felt like a kind of scarlet letter. Brandishing me a terrible friend and human.

‘What, you can’t even open your laptop and log on?’

But this week I had an ace up my sleeve. I’d already committed, in the group thread, to coming to the Zoom that night. A simple, unassuming ‘thumbs up’ emoji. The first time I’d even acknowledged the existence of a weekly Zoom in several months. 

Surely, there was no turning back now?

And in the end, somehow that was enough. I logged on. I saw the faces of friends I’ve known for years. People I genuinely love. People I’d somehow built up in my mind as some kind of monolith, but who are in fact just people. 

My friends did comment on my extended absence, but in that way friends can, where it’s not actually a criticism. Just gentle, affectionate ribbing. 

(‘A Graham cameo! How delightful!’)

And in the end, it was a really nice thing to have done. Emboldened by that one group hangout I then said yes to two others - another friend group, and a family catch up - that I’d usually have seven reasons to say ‘no' to.

Floodgates. Open.

Staying attached to the intent

On top of those three group hangouts in one week, I even squeezed in a Zoom one-on-one with a dear friend on Sunday. 

(Who even am I anymore?)

This friend is a fellow sensitive cat, and we ended up talking about the challenges of staying social mid-pandemic.

Like me he’s had every intention to stay in touch with friends but is struggling to actually follow through as much as he’d like.

My friend had a nice frame for this, though. He said lately he’s been trying to ‘stay attached to the intent.’ The intent to touch base with that friend he hasn’t spoken to in a while, or that colleague that he’s been meaning to catch up with. 

So that even if it takes him a while to actually do it, he knows he will get to it eventually.

There are two (very different) ways to stay attached to the intent

I really like this phrase, ‘staying attached to the intent.’

I think as big feelers, there are essentially two ways we can do this. One helpful, one not so helpful. 

You probably already know the not so helpful way of staying attached to the intent.

‘Oh god I still haven’t messaged so and so. It’s been on my list for weeks. I’m such a shit friend.’

You’re aware of the intent to reach out to this or that friend, but you’re aware of it primarily through the prism of judgement and shame. 

So what’s the other option? 

As my friend suggested in our chat, perhaps there’s a way of staying attached to the intent that is less judgemental. That honours all the procrastination and the doubt and the false starts as part of the process. That says ‘this is hard, but we’ll get there eventually.’

Trusting your (imperfect) process 

I look at my process with the Wednesday Night Zoom Hangout. It was hardly straightforward. For the first two weeks, it looked like failure, not progress. 

But it got me there, in the end.

When you’re someone who finds ‘belonging’ hard at the best of times, you have to nurture that intent to reach out, when it comes. 

Nurture it like the delicate little seed it is. And be patient with it (and yourself) while it grows. 

Yes, it will sit there on your to-do list for a while yet, bringing up all kinds of doubt and guilt and judgement. Yes you will wonder why this shit is so complicated for you, when it doesn’t seem to be for other people. 

But maybe this is all part of the process? The imperfect process that gets you there eventually.

So this is my new phrase for these situations, when I'm starting to feel frustrated or ashamed with myself. 'I'm trusting my imperfect process.'

You won’t get to everything on your to-do list. (Because who ever gets to everything on their to-do list??) But you’ll get to enough of it. And it all starts with that delicate, tender intention to keep reaching out, even when it feels impossible.

Unexpected tears

Near the end of the one-on-one call with my friend, I found myself tearing up unexpectedly.

I was describing something I cherish about our friendship, that we can talk about this sort of stuff - the challenges of belonging when you’re a sensitive cat, for instance. I was using a metaphor of passing a ball between us, back and forth. 

At an intellectual level, what we’re passing back and forth are ideas. I’ll say ‘I’ve been reading this book about trauma’ and he’ll say ‘that sounds a bit like this work by so and so’, and we’ll keep passing the ball back and forth, nerding out about feelings. 

But there’s another layer to the game, I told him. At the heart level, what we’re really passing back and forth is a simple, gentle message. ‘You’re okay, I’m okay. You’re okay, I’m okay. It’s okay to feel like this.’

And that’s when I started tearing up. 

After a big week with lots of socialising, I think these were tears of gratitude - that when I can muster the courage to reach out to my fellow humans, there are people still willing to have me, even if it's been a long while between drinks.

And they were also tears of relief. That even though, yes, belonging is hard work for me, I can still do it. Really well in fact! When I manage to make it to the Zoom call.

That the hard work of belonging does pay off, eventually. 

I just have to be patient. Trusting my imperfect process.

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