An Ode to Internet Friends
or: the time I went away with 11 other women and didn't hate a single second of it
Like many millennials I cut my Internet teeth in the world of LiveJournal, spending hours writing and posting terrible poetry complete with the requisite strikethroughs and • symbols. I had one reader whose praise was enough to validate my tortured artist persona, and whose own LJ page presented me with something wholly new and exciting: the world of fanfiction. My Chemical Romance fanfiction to be exact. Reading stories about my favourite band felt like uncovering a chest of hidden treasure, and better yet they were all secretly in love with each other (just like I imagined!). I devoured everything I could find before finally plucking up the courage to write my own. I didn’t go in for sex scenes - at this point I had barely even kissed anyone - but the stories of unrequited love, deep longing and clandestine hand-holding were like catnip to my teenage brain. Suddenly, I had a community at my fingertips where my passion for writing and emo music were allowed to coalesce in the most exciting way. It was so supportive: we would beta read each other’s work, write stories as gifts and take part in drabble* challenges together. This world was my little secret, somewhere to escape to when real life wasn’t living up to what the OC had promised me. I suppose I also kept it under lock and key because I was harbouring some shame around it - of course fanfiction felt subversive, but so too did the idea of making friends online.
*From quora: a drabble is a short piece of writing (usually fanfiction but sometimes original), usually no more than a 1000 words (although length is debatable) and often not bearing any real direction or plot. Ain’t that the truth.
I have never done well in big groups. At school I was always more of a one-friend-wonder and when some sort of rift inevitably caused us to split, I often felt on the outside of things. I went to an all-girls grammar school so not only was the academic pressure high but the rules of girlhood were out in full force on a daily basis. My particular brand of social currency (frizzy hair, glasses and braces) didn’t pay for much. I did have friends in and out of school, in fact one of them is now my husband - hi! - but I also suffered with low mood and crippling social anxiety. My sixth form years were a mess: self-harm, skipping classes, two weeks in bed unable to face the world before my mum dragged me to the GP and I was given the helpfully vague diagnosis of generalised anxiety disorder. My A-Level results are testament to how very much Not There I was during that time. But through it all, there was this secret place where I could go (phoneline availability dependent!) and be myself. I didn’t find that sense of belonging or writing discipline again, no matter how hard I looked, for many years.
In 2017 I gave birth to my first child, a daughter, and my world was turned completely on its head. I was part-way through the second year of my midwifery degree when she was born, and I went from a calendar filled with night shifts, seminars and study groups to being mostly alone in our flat, in a town where I knew no one, trying to navigate life with a newborn. Well, let me tell you, navigate it I did not. There is much more I want to write on this topic so I won’t try to do that huge life transition justice here, but what I will say is I was depressed.
Postnatal depression is a trickster because at first you think oh, this must be normal, all of the hormones keeping me sane have just been ejected from my body along with a whole human and an organ I grew from scratch, plus I haven’t slept in 72 hours. But then, as you start to dread the sun setting and are doing anything you can to avoid holding your baby, the thoughts change to well I sure am terrible at this but I best not tell anyone about all the scary thoughts I’ve been having because not coping doesn’t seem like it’s an available option here. That whole period of my life is mostly lost to me now: the memories are few and far between, and the ones that remain seem to be wrapped up in a thick, dark fog. I feel too sad about that to even examine it all too closely yet. But what I did find, when the gloom slowly began to dissipate, was a little world inside my phone.
I didn’t reach the promised land of a big group of real-life mum friends. I struggled in baby classes because I couldn’t make small talk and was mostly trying to turn off the faucet behind my eyes that appeared to be permanently open. As well as crying all the time, I was desperately trying to claw back the remnants of my personality. I didn’t want to discuss nappies and sleep schedules (although I was obsessed) or competitively compare baby milestones. I wanted to talk about books and great TV shows and, oh yeah, what the fuck had happened to my brain since having a baby.
I found a little bit of what I was looking for on Instagram. There were parents talking about all of the things I had been too afraid to say out loud, worried that there was something wrong with me, and while I was mostly lingering on the periphery of it all I felt that spark of community again.
It has been six years since I first dipped my toe into the large (and sometimes murky) social media pool, and finding a sense of myself took time. The world of mum-fluencers is not for the faint hearted and it took a while to delve under the surface of the cliques and children-as-content Instagrammers to find true connection. It was a labyrinth where I spent most of my time peeking round corners to see if there was a place I might fit. I travelled at a snail’s pace, but eventually I was brave enough to step out of the shadows and start exploring.
Just over a year ago, I signed up to an online women’s circle. From October through to January a group of us gathered in front of our laptop screens on a Sunday night and began to share our stories. We were given the space to examine things people rarely give airtime to: our history, our creativity, our place in the world. I listened to eight other wonderful women open their hearts and in return they witnessed me without judgment. Looking back, it was the beginning of something. Slowly but surely, I was finding my people.
Then in July I posted a picture of my iPad balancing on top of a pile of books about writing to my Instagram story. I was waiting to be let into a Teams meeting for a job interview, and my caption read ‘she works in healthcare, but I think she might want to write?’. A little while later a notification popped up asking me if I would like to be part of a small writing group, a place for us to encourage and support and be accountable. It took me approximately twelve seconds to reply YES!
Welcoming those things in, telling myself to fight the imposter syndrome, was key to the most exciting part of the journey so far.
And so it was that on the last weekend in November I over-packed the car, my husband sarcastically offering me things I might have missed: a spatula, a soup spoon, the steam mop, and set off to a rambling country pile in Lincolnshire (coincidentally the place I grew up and wrote all of that fanfiction). The plan was a reading retreat which offered us the chance to let go of the mental load for a few days and take time to do what we love - read books, eat delicious food and relax. Most of us had never met before, so it was a gamble, but one that promised a big reward if it all went well.
The week before we had each shared a little bit about ourselves on our WhatsApp group, the idea being that we could save the awkward small talk and give people a heads up about anything that might be useful to know ahead of living together for seventy-two hours. And, honestly, the joy when we all wrote ten page essays was palpable. It wasn’t the boring stuff you usually have to wade through before you can start asking so what’s your deepest, darkest secret? It was people feeling safe enough to share this is the way my brain works and this is what I’m going through at the moment. It broke down barriers before we were even in the same room.
I savoured the drive, belting out Taylor Swift songs like the cliché thirty-something I am and crying intermittently with a something between nerves and elation coursing through me. I pulled over to watch the sunset - a feature of Lincolnshire’s flat-as-a-pancake landscape that I never quite appreciated as a teenager - and arrived at the house in relative darkness. Through glowing windows I saw three dimensional versions of people I had only ever met through a screen.
The house itself was astonishing. High ceilings, multiple staircases, enormous paintings and a SWIMMING POOL! Completely alien to me was the feeling of immediate ease and comfort as I walked in. I settled into the squishy corner sofa and looked around with a contented sigh. We had made it.
Next to the big house was a smaller place (though it was still bigger than most of our actual houses), which we lovingly nicknamed Conversation Cottage. My room was there, looking out over the vast grounds, and I had two of my circle alumni for company. That first night, after we said goodbye to the others, the three of us got into our pyjamas and settled down with a hot drink in front of a Christmas film. We talked and laughed while the predictable tropes played out and I felt myself really, truly leaning in to all of it.
One thing I can pretty much always guarantee in large group situations is that I will want to be alone. The time it takes for that to happen depends on who I’m with, but it has generally kicked in after four or five hours in company. My head becomes so crowded with noise and so tired from trying to keep up with the social niceties that my body is taken over by a frantic energy which is almost impossible to shake. And on the retreat it just… never happened. I didn’t need space to decompress. I didn’t have to make small talk or wear uncomfortable clothes. I was simply able to exist as I am.
I can’t explain what happened during those three days, other than to say it felt like taking off a heavy suit of armour I didn’t know I was wearing. There were no sharp edges: no pretence, no anxiety over missed social cues, no worries about eye contact (too much? not enough?) and - miracle of miracles - no painful analysis of every word I had said come bedtime.
I still hold on to some of that shame around making friends on the Internet, as though it might be perceived as weird or somehow less legitimate than “real life” friendships. And my goodness, I wouldn’t have got through life so far without the close friendships I have cultivated in the real world since university - those women are everything. But I suppose I am partly writing this to try and wash away that uncomfortable feeling, to lay it all out bare and say it’s okay - you are allowed to have found community online. And I’m also writing it for the other people that perhaps haven’t found what they’re looking for yet. Be patient, say yes, you will find your circle and it will feel golden.
As I finished working on this piece and asked my writing group for some advice, I was pointed in the direction of this article which articulates so many of my thoughts on what I now know are called asynchronous friendships. I love that I have friends now who will send me writing about asynchronous friendships!
PS I have just pledged my support - this looks like such a great new writing venture for you, Emily, really hope you keep it up!
Enjoyed your piece very much, Emily - thank you! It's very heartening to think about the good friends I've met through writing and publishing online.