Post-Covid Loneliness as a 30-Something Millennial

The seed must have been planted unknowingly during lockdown when I first entered my new decade: a vague, pervading sense of loneliness that has compounded over the past few months in steady increments, sometimes catching me out of the blue and winding me when I’m doing something non-descript, like walking to the off-licence, or commuting into London on my own. Sometimes, I wake up thinking about it.

Don’t get me wrong, I have a loving, attentive partner and fulfilling friendship groups. I’m talking about peripheral loneliness, the lack of extras in my life that seemed to be ten-a-dozen during my twenties, and who I took for granted would always be there: colleagues asking who’s coming to the pub for an after-work drink, the office receptionist chatting to me ten times a day as I take a vape break, the same strangers on my tube every morning, offering a smile and sometimes a wave. I am sure if I was single and lived alone, or if my social groups were wanting, I would have bigger fish to fry. But in this new “Post-Covid” world, I really miss these witnesses to the mundane, the incidental characters who lend a cinematic quality to our lives.

I’ve always relished alone time. Like most, of us, before lockdown I was in the office 9am-5pm, five days a week. “How did we do it?” my friends and I ask each other now, exhausted after the first of our two contractual days per week wearing corporate clothing and lanyards. I lived with friends back then, before a brief stint back in the family home. Evenings were for group dinners and workout classes. I was constantly surrounded by people. This was the norm and being from London, I was exhausted by it, half of me in a state of constant longing to get back into bed and squirrel away under the covers with my laptop, to write, or simply make sense of the day and recharge.

When invited to something, my first thought is usually “Will future me be so tired she’ll regret agreeing to this?” In my twenties, alone-time was something to be coveted. I find that I still operate from this mindset out of habit, declining in favour of being supine in the bath, sofa, or my bed. A desire for solitude has been instilled in me since childhood (I was an only child until the age of nine) and I still crave it like it’s going out of fashion, rushing through my outdoor to-do list as if it’s a series of tick boxes I must check off until I’m back with my home comforts and true enjoyment can begin.

I was furloughed in March 2020 before being made redundant that September. I’d just moved out of London with my girlfriend and despite the lack of a decent severance package, was overjoyed. I’d finally get what I’ve always wanted: endless time to finish the book I’d started writing in 2018. The following June, my new HR job in an international construction firm allowed me to work remotely three days per week. Without time wasted on commuting and energy spent on social obligations, evening and weekends would pass in a dreamy haze of enjoyable personal work — a permanent retreat, the writer’s dream.

But now three years into this new way of life, somewhere along the way I’ve realised the reverse is now true. Socialising is more of a rarity; time at home is of abundance. Covid has changed lifestyle dynamics, slowed us down. My friends have all turned thirty and some have moved further afield, removed from the familiar city hubbub. Priorities are shifting, time allocated like slices of a pie chart as we get married and start families. The gradual, natural shift from one decade to another has been concentrated since we were robbed of the final years of our “raucous, roving twenties”, as Dolly Alderton affectionately called them. I now get FOMO if I’m home longer than twenty-four hours.

It’s not so much the act of socialising — which I still do often — that I find lacking, but the liminal moments travelling to and from places, which seem increasingly singular. Events themselves seem to be stop gaps on the long train journey that is my life. I am reminded of a sole-player video game, Lara Croft forever moving forward with nothing but her own grunts of exertion as background music, occasionally stumbling across another lone player or a small community who impart a brief mission, before leaving her to her own devices once more. I miss the thousand tiny intimacies of my before-life: everyone around me doing their own thing noisily in the background, the housemates I loved, but sometimes ignored in the kitchen, because it didn’t matter, we were all committed to still being there tomorrow.

I took a dance class today — my first one in five years — which I felt compelled to join precisely because of said loneliness. My fiancée was in Portugal and the atmosphere of the studio filled a void inside of me I didn’t realise I’d been missing. As we spilled out of the building, a sweaty mass into the baking heat of a June evening in Vauxhall, the sunlight was glinting on The Thames and people were enjoying Aperol and alfresco tapas on the high street. The rest of the evening still sprawled ahead like a neat row of Dominos but I hadn’t made plans with anyone, not convinced my energy levels would sustain beyond the hour I’d promised to dance. It’s such a shame, I thought, that no one is here to share this sunny evening with me purely because I didn’t want the commitment of sticking to a plan. I guess all there is to do is go home. But whatever my mood ended up being, wouldn’t it have been nice if– like the old days — two or three familiar faces were waiting in the courtyard with iced coffees as I tumbled out, just so I could laugh with them, give them a hug and be on my merry way? Wouldn’t it be handy if a friend also happened to live nearby, had an errand to run and I could pass them in the street for a quick chat? Now everything must be planned, or not at all. Spontaneity is a distant memory.

At the beginning of summer, I’d wake up immediately panicked that I was missing something, the key to a secret just out of reach. For weeks I couldn’t think why. I began to say yes to more plans with old friends I hadn’t seen for a while, stayed with my mum for the weekend in the hopes she’d give me a glimpse of my old routine. Are you what I’m missing? Is it you? I asked, the answer always yes, my loved ones filling me to the top with contentment until I was back on that quiet train journey home again. It made me realise, it isn’t the players that have changed, but the road we’re on. Nostalgic whimsy is temporal and fleeting now. Perhaps what is missing is not any tangible person or thing, but simply youth, the only comparable antidote to which is interrailing in Europe with a bunch of 16–24 years old, or travelling to South America for six months to immerse myself in a collective camaraderie, the way I would have as a university student. Both of these examples are things I actually don’t want to do any more. The duplicitousness is confusing. So I now seek bite-size versions of the same, eager for long weekends away, hen parties, any concentrated length of time with a group of people that has more depth than “popping in for a cup of tea”. Next year I vow to have Glastonbury in and around my mouth. Until then, I’m making a concerted effort to be present, ensure the quality time I spend with those I love is absorbed fully, rather than just rushing through my day’s checklist until I can be at home, absolving some unnecessary guilt to get my head down and write the book I need to remember I long since finished, back in 2020 when we had nowhere else to go.