Did you loose friends during the Pandemic? Initial articles on the internet suggested that it would take about six weeks to regain the friends you only thought you lost. That was just several months into what has been and most certainly is and will remain an epic historical event.
I personally have.
I know one is never coming back. Religious differences.
Another might if I work on it. Bonded over dogs. Has lots of family. Does not need friends.
I have coffee at an outdoor restaurant planned in a couple weeks with another who is out of town right now. Lit major. Not Vaccinated.
Another tells me he does not think he will EVER AGAIN be in LA County! He has gone to live in Orange.
Yet another, after a long spate of unemployment that made him depressed and feel hopeless, actually found work during the pandemic and bought a car with his stimulus checks. His first car in over a decade!
Lots of people have misplaced friends. The long stretch of time with death as the main topic - a necessary obsession - demanded another way of being. Being forced to sequester allowed some people to maximize their use of unexpected time off and do a project that had been on hold. It seems many people just thought about their lives, what had been before, what they wanted to do next, or before they died, if only they could. They could barely wait to get unstuck. Acting upon realizations and decisions made,great numbers have moved to smaller, more affordable places. (Yet there are always incoming.) Some rekindled the closeness with their partners that they felt when they first got together. Others realized that they could only live with their partner if they were both working and saw each other a little. Divorces forthcoming.
So, my thoughts turned to some long ago friends - most who were not close. I didn't want contact. I was just wondering.
Rather than learn what they had been up to during the pandemic, some information on the net turned out to be more dated.
I learned that a person who at the time I thought to be one of the most all around creative people I had ever met had stayed true to herself as a talented seamstress and thrift store collector of antiques and had moved into theatrical costuming. The surprise was that she was divorced long ago.
Someone else had managed to actually put in 40 years into one job and, now retired, was a historian of the local in which he had been raised and worked. I didn't recognize him from the photos. (I barely know anyone who managed 20 years in one workplace... I barely know anyone who managed 10...)
There were those who had been quite public for a long time as creators of poetry and music but who seemed to have disappeared, perhaps into private lives, perhaps - I venture - in order to care for family or partners - well before the pandemic. Maybe they needed a break. Maybe they reassessed. Maybe they learned there was something else they wanted.
A lot of people had moved and moved again.
From San Francisco to Asheville, North Carolina.
From Santa Cruz, to Iowa, to New Mexico.
From LA to Arizona to Up-State New York.
From LA to Santa Barbara.
From LA to Utah.
From LA to Portland.
One person had about eight addresses reflecting his itinerant profession, but settled in a small town in Texas. Ventura to LA to Santa Cruz to..... Texas.
Someone else had managed to archive a history of their art and music-related business at California State University at Northridge. I thought he was younger.
Like we all do - quickly or slowly - planned or unplanned - they'd moved forward.
The question of how to move forward when you're forced to stall out is not easy unless you have considerable resources.
I've always hated it when someone uses the terminology (usually about others) "end up" as in "where did he end up?" I figure that answer is ultimately heaven or hell, not Portland or New Mexico.
I ran into a couple I met a few years ago. They told me about some regulars at a restaurant that I had met, both in their 80's, who had died of Covid, one after the other, not long after they - finally - got their citizenship.
C 2022 Christine Trzyna
