Can we talk sometime?

The things that feel missing

Illustration by Natalie McNulty

Written by Jonathan Tall

My thumbs do a dance as they move across the screen, typing and deleting and retyping words as they come to mind.

The last 72 hours have been a haze. Driving to work with no memory of when I woke up, being on my feet for hours at a time, performing menial tasks for people that look at me with contempt. They believe I’m deserving of their scrutiny because I make less than them.

Laying in bed, too exhausted to eat anything, the remaining hours are spent cycling through different apps. I start with Twitter in an attempt to be certain I hadn’t missed any news in the last seven minutes. Hinge notifications, emails and Snapchat stories — endlessly.

A slight headache sits heavy above my eyes. I switch over to messages, scrolling until I come across someone I haven’t spoken to in a while; the last text sent dated back 6 months. It felt like a lifetime.

We met during our college years. I’ve always struggled at connecting with people, but conversations with them felt easy. They made me feel visible when others couldn’t touch me, there was a time we wouldn’t go a day without talking to each other. Now, if I closed my eyes, I’m unsure if I could make out their face.

My social circle has gotten smaller as I’ve gotten older — people I’ve cared about grew further away. With noticeable effort, I finally think of what to ask:

“Hey, it’s been awhile, can we talk sometime?”

It somehow seems harder to talk to other people. Despite the access to advanced communicative technology, we still eventually lose touch. Now there’s an added anxiety: if everyone you’ve ever known is capable of reaching you at any moment, but they aren’t, what does that say about you?

“There’s a different kind of loneliness knowing that everyone in your life can be in contact with you at any moment,” my friend, Fred, said. “It feels more significant when nobody is contacting you, there’s a degree of embarrassment and shame in sending multiple texts to someone and not hearing back.”

Phones require less in-person interaction, with more time to formulate a response to people. Texting anxiety is low and constant, how a minor exchange is perceived eats away at you. Everyone you know is dealing with their own financial and personal troubles, sticking us in limbo.

We are collectively aware those around us are struggling, with no conscious way of breaking out of it.

There has never been a generation more in tune with their mental health, and increased awareness hasn’t done much to alleviate the problem. In a 2020 study, BMC Psychiatry found that people aged 11–30 experience loneliness at a much greater rate than any other demographic. Loneliness can be understood as a subjective construct, relating to feelings of alienation, social connectedness and lack of belonging. In comparing the social networks of young and middle-aged adults, young people reported feeling lonely twice as often, despite much larger social networks.

Feeling lonely seems endemic to contemporary life. In “Capitalist Realism,” Mark Fisher writes that this was accelerated by developments in capitalism over the last 50 years. We’ve seen the remarkable upwardredistribution of wealth to a few hands, a financial meltdown that resulted in 10 million foreclosures, the increasing cost of living put owning a house out of reach and a looming environmental catastrophe. It’s no wonder we feel abandoned, we never had a chance.

Sitting in a dimly lit bar, not quite drunk enough to be having a good time, I can overhear the conversations. Most of them are referential in nature, trading different jokes and memes from their timelines. Someone yells, “Have you seen this!?” and a phone is thrust in my face displaying a video of an orangutan driving a golf cart. I smile, but it doesn’t come across as sincere. “Yeah, I think I’ve seen that one before.”

Illustration by Natalie McNulty

Between an online presence and social isolation, the former is an easy choice. But it doesn’t feel authentic. TikTok is filled with impossibly beautiful people selling you products, Instagram populated by those you vaguely know pretending their life is more exciting than it actually is. Twitter’s business model is built on instantaneous interaction — your finger constantly refreshing as your eyes glaze over the screen.

Any positive social movements are commodified and incorporated into advertising. This 10 second ad features a company that is 100% committed to green technology, this influencer posted an infographic dedicating themselves to the Black Lives Matter movement. Billionaires now own the way we connect with others, we sold it to them without even realizing it.

“It’s very difficult to distinguish what’s performative and what’s sincere online, it’s impossible to know based on what people post who they are,” Fred said. “Sincerity is terrifying to a lot of young people.”

Throughout the night, I repeat a cycle: checking my phone periodically (the weather app becomes particularly interesting if I want it to look like I’m doing something) and ironically distancing myself in conversation. If I found the language to say what I truly meant, would anyone even listen?

Later, I end up falling asleep with my laptop screen halfway open, trying not to think about when I have to go back to work, where I’ll be five years from now, who I’ll still be talking to.

“You feel exhausted, not because you’re doing work that advances you in any way– exhausted while doing work to keep you in the same place,” Fred said. “There’s no aspiration for any kind of advancement, you’re trying to keep your head above water.”

Studying the text laid out on the screen to my friend, I’m reminded of other things I can add. Maybe I had read too much Sally Rooney. I wanted to mention that even though I was tired and it was late, I was remembering strangely that wherever I go, you are with me, and that as long as you still live the world will be beautiful to me.

I blow air out of my nose at the naked sincerity of the message. I delete the text entirely, staring at nothing.