Corona Virus Diaries
My ability to be kind, I didn’t know how far that could reach.
While it is difficult to meet with people in person, online spaces have become a safe space for appropriately distanced socializing without ever leaving the house. We have become more familiar with video calling apps like Zoom in this time of social distancing. Suddenly, almost every relationship has become long distance. In turn, the way in which we understand our relationships has changed. When we are no longer burdened by the social conventions forced upon us in physical interaction – such as the classic office water cooler talk, the foundation of our relationships starts to show.
For some, such as myself, it has felt a bit isolating. Without a physical representation of my interactions, I have experienced a difficulty in forming the same emotional connections. But when I interviewed Ambihai, she explained how this absence provided a chance for newfound relationships and more personal connections.
Ambihai is a high school student. Prior to quarantine her and her classmates were on March Break, unaware that the weeks leading up to it would be their last in-person days of class for the year. She described her experience of transitioning from vacation time away from school to mandated schooling from home.
During March break a lot of my friends have asked me to hang out. And I said “No” because I wanted to stay home, and I just wanted to take a break from school. […] I wish I had done that. Just seeing people, it makes me very happy, and now it’s the thing I miss most.
Ambihai elaborated on that sense of loss, “I realize that I didn’t just miss the people that I talked to every single day. I missed the people that would make the school better. People I would sit next to in class but wouldn’t go out of my way to talk to.”
This prompted her to do something she had never really considered doing before. Or rather, something she had never felt the need to do before.
“I started reaching out. Let’s just talk, let’s call. And I’m going to see how you are feeling and we are going to talk.”
This newfound dynamic in day to day relationships has given Ambihai an opportunity to connect with her peers in a new way.
Social distancing asks us to consciously reach out to others. We are no longer interacting passively at work or in class. By demanding intent, we become far more conscious of the relationships we hold and the relationships we choose to form. The onus lies on the individual to reach out and maintain those connections. For Ambihai, this drastic shift in how we interact has given her the opportunity to get to know her peers in a far more personal way than she believed she would ever have achieved at school.
She remarks that the most prominent difference which gave way to this change in her friendships is the difference in the context of the interaction. The conversations held are no longer contextualized within a classroom or school environment.
Calling them is a bit different […] it’s a bit more personal than just talking to them face to face […] I get to see inside their rooms.
In talking to her peers through zoom calls where each of them is in their room, Ambihai comments on how it reveals a whole different side of them than what would be shown in school. Pre Covid-19 she remarks how she never really knew much about her friends beyond their school lives. But through video chats you enter their personal space and are shown a whole new side of them that is not presented in a school environment. Maybe it is something new revealed in the books you see on the shelves in the background. Maybe it is in the paintings hung on the wall. Or maybe it is just as simple as hearing the voice of a sibling call out in the background.
Ambihai notes that she is aware of how her background reflects her perceived image and that she does take care to present a certain version of herself in these video calls. In turn, it is more than likely that her peers are doing the same.
Nonetheless, there is still a degree of trust, the curation of one’s video call screen does not mitigate the fact that one is still revealing a (different) part of themselves than they would otherwise. You are inviting the recipient of the call into your home, your personal space.
The result of this is that Ambihai has been able to form new friendships in quarantine she may not have had the chance to form otherwise. However, this is not to say that her pre-existing friendships have been left behind.
Quarantine has given people the opportunity to realize which friendships she values. In high school you are constantly around the same group of people every day. There are friendships born out of genuine care for one another, but there are also friendships born out of necessity – out of sitting beside the same person every day for several years. While this was not something I came to realize until my final year of high school, it seems that quarantine may be providing high school students with a crash course on adult friendships. Now that students are not confined to a building full of the same group of people for six plus hours a day, five days a week, it becomes easier to re-examine relationships and determine whether they hold meaning to you.
At school it was always “if I have friends then I won’t be lonely” […] but now I am okay with being alone and I also know that I can reach out to the people that I want to surround myself with.
It should be noted that, this is not to say that to maintain relationships one must constantly be reaching out to prove they care. When asked about her thoughts on the notion that it’s only the people who reach out to you who care about you Ambihai replies: “I know these people still care about me it’s just they might not have the space to do that now.”
While it is wonderful to have the chance to look at who makes you happy and consciously choose to spend time with them, it seems that there is also a comfort to be found in the silence between calls. As she has also been discovering. There is importance in the self care taken in those moments, in learning to be okay with being by oneself.
Overall, it seems that this quarantine has given Ambihai a chance to learn more about herself. She has discovered the power held in reaching out to others. "My ability to be kind, I didn’t know how far that could reach.”
Author: Katherine Bell
Katherine Bell is an undergraduate university student studying art history and philosophy. As a queer, mixed race individual, they are interested in false notions of binary in identity and deconstructing the impact of colonialism on academia/art. You can find their art on Instagram as @2katbell