Who’s still checking up on you?: A pandemic shouldn’t be the basis to test your friendship.

By: Nadine Bufi

During this pandemic, you really see who your real friends are. Who’s checking up on you? Making sure you’re okay? Remember that when this is all over.

— Tia Mowry

It is easy to feel self-centered when we’ve had almost 250 days to think alone — to spend time with nobody but ourselves. With the growing uneasy feeling of “when is quarantine actually going to end” and the struggle of trying to feel normal in abnormal situations — our social lives have suffered. Some, almost indefinitely.

In the words of Mowry, are we acting like real friends? For being the out-of-touch, once-a-week, pop-up friend who sometimes opens messages and forgets to answer them. Who tweets but can’t seem to pick up the phone as soon as anyone calls. Who takes weeks to reply, only for it to be a one-point message, almost like a wave from across the street, but nothing more.

I’ve been feeling guilty, how the hours have extended and I still couldn’t find the time to drop by my friends’ chat box and tell them “Hi.” For weeks, it felt like a chore — something that had to be scheduled and something I dreaded to do. It has suddenly become a difficult task to get up and take care of ourselves and with the little energy we had left, it wasn’t enough to check up on our friends.

It is important to remember that a daily text doesn’t necessarily mean that your friendship is better than those who can pick it up after weeks of no talking, almost as if nothing had happened. We have entirely different ways of coping, some a little closer to the inbox than others. As friends, we should be thinking about each other every day, but it doesn’t require us to spell it out on Messenger, Instagram, or Facebook.

Forgiving your friends for not being able to show up in a time like this, will almost prove to show how strong your relationship can be, withstanding even silence because you know that behind that, they’re working on it and they still care.

So forgive and be patient. Please don’t crucify them — a text and a phone call could be the toughest job in the world and we wouldn’t even know it.