Nurture yourselves and each other.” — is what I heard them say. And what I mean by “them” is the ones on the other side. A couple of months ago, I had a third-eye-that’s-so-raven moment where I heard this during the full moon in Taurus.
If you don’t know, I’m kinda psychic… and maybe that’s one of the reasons why I haven’t found my community yet.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about this message and also seeing more and more people speak up about how we need to have more community in our society (society as in — the Western world — just a small fraction of the globe). From Trump being re-elected in 2024 to the “loneliness epidemic,” I understand why people are championing this. However, I believe many people say a bunch of things over the internet that sound good and hopeful, but collectively they aren’t doing much in reality to make a difference.
You really think you’re gonna overthrow oppressive systems but can’t even maintain a three-person group chat?
Gen-Z: the generation that ghosts and grieves in the same sentence
People, especially my generation (Gen-Z), have made it a habit to ghost, and on the other hand, expect to be ghosted in both platonic and romantic relationships. That’s on top of the fact that people don’t keep in contact with their closest relatives or friends in real life. But I know I’m going to get some people to say, “because of capitalism…” or “oh we don’t have third spaces…” and other rationales that don’t play a big factor in having genuine relationships. Yes, these are all real annoying barriers. But, they’ve also become a convenient shield for our own unwillingness to be accountable to others in the smallest, most human ways.
Our parents and older generations would invite their friends over for pizza or play a game of cards or just talk on the phone for hours. For instance, my mom would spend hours on the phone with her friend after work (or on her day off) while doing tasks around the house. My mom and her friend didn’t have brunch spots and karaoke bars, especially while living in the Mississippi Delta. She had her Blackberry phone and laundry to fold. She still managed to talk to her best friend every week while upholding her work life and familial relationships.
We say we don’t have time to hang out or check in, but people will spend hours watching TikToks of strangers crying in their car. We give our attention to spectacle, not to each other. And then turn around and romanticize deep friendships, community living, found families, but treat people in real life like notifications we’ll get to later.
Real-world scenario kids
I had a friend who I met through the oh-so-wonderful Bumble BFF app (that’s another blog for another day), and we agreed to meet for the first time for brunch. We met up and everything went well; we had some good food, mimosas, and a nice chit-chat that went on for about 2 hours.
Post-first meetup (first and last): We had these long drawn out conversations via text for about 2 months. I mean I don’t know about you girlypops but there is nothing normal about stretching out a text after asking a simple question: “What are your plans for the weekend?”
For another month, I would suggest doing something together but I was met with either 4-day responses or something “came up.” Then, one day — dead silence.
After almost 3 weeks of not hearing from her, she then suddenly wants to meet up for an outdoor jazz event out of nowhere. At first, I wanted to go, but then I canceled due to my “trauma response” where I abandon before being abandoned. Since then, we haven’t spoken to each other.
We say we don’t have time to hang out or check in, but people will spend hours watching TikToks of strangers crying in their car
And I’m not above any of this. I’ve ignored people I loved and I made excuses. I’ve watched myself slowly fade from someone’s life like it didn’t matter, and then pretended I didn’t notice when the distance turned permanent. My own silence has become habit, and has made detachment look like independence and being “mature for my own age.”
If I had to theorize, I would say I think we’re terrified. Scared if someone really saw us — how inconsistent we are, how unsure, emotionally strange, and socially misshapen we’ve become, then they’d leave too. So, we don’t give them the chance.
Gendered hypocrisy
OOOOO nobody’s safe! Yes, I’m about to get on my girlies, my girlfriennndddds (Girlfriends TV show tune) too.
What’s been eating at me lately is how easily we accept distance in our platonic relationships, especially cis women. The same women who would spiral if their boyfriend took six hours to respond will go six weeks without checking in on a friend. And I’m tired of pretending that’s okay and it doesn’t hurt.
We give romantic partners the kind of effort, presence, and forgiveness we don’t even offer to our friends. And I think a lot of women don’t realize that we’ve internalized this illusion that romantic love is urgent, and it’s supposed to be dramatic and all-consuming. Yet, friendship is optional, decorative, the side dish to your main emotional meal. But friendship is one of the relationships most of us will have for decades longer than many romantic partners. And still, we don’t treat it like it matters. We don’t fight for our friendships (even familial relationships) the way we beg men to care about us.
And if we want to go deeper — some of us are committed to healing our inner child through romance, but wouldn’t know how to receive softness from a friend unless it came with the threat of losing them. You know how to chase, but don’t know how to be witnessed gently.
Fellas, fellas, fellas
If women are taught to overextend, be available, forgiving, and self-sacrificing, then men are taught the opposite. Most of the men I’ve known, and the ones I’ve eavesdropped on from a distance, aren’t building their friendships around care, softness, or presence. They’re building them around permission. Permission to be seen as successful, powerful, and untouchable. Most of their “bonds” are based on mutual ego-stroking, a group project in patriarchal validation, as long as no one actually says they’re lonely or going through a rough period in their life.
These are friendships defined not by active connection, but by absence without consequence. Their friendships don’t require tending, they just exist in some suspended state of assumed loyalty that doesn’t demand emotional effort. And when SHTF — loss, heartbreak, mental illness — most of them don’t even go to each other. They go to the women in their lives. Their girlfriend, their mom, maybe a sister. Or they don’t go to anyone at all.
And it makes sense, because men are taught that vulnerability between men is a risk. Most haven’t been given the emotional tools to say, I need you, or I’m hurting, or even I miss you, without it being filtered through “no homo” jokes, sports talk, or some shallow excuse to link. Their friendships revolve around activities, achievements, group chats with zero depth and sardonic memes, and sometimes, thinly veiled competition. The big unspoken rules among them are: don’t need too much. Don’t be too soft. Don’t get too close.
And if we want to go deeper — some of us are committed to healing our inner child through romance, but wouldn’t know how to receive softness from a friend unless it came with the threat of losing them
So what happens is this:
A man can have ten friends and still die of emotional starvation. He can go to the gym with them, game with them, drink with them, talk money or girls or sports, but none of them know how to hold grief. None of them know how to say, you don’t have to act okay here.
And then they enter romantic relationships carrying that starvation, expecting their partner to be therapist, best friend, co-regulator, their mommy and emotional processor all in one. Because they’ve never had to sit with these feelings and experience among their peers.
Performative activism & false collectives
Now, time for the collective callout. I’ve seen so many people (myself included) wrap ourselves in the language of radical care, abolitionist futures, decolonial collectives, and mutual aid, while not even knowing how to say no in real life. You talk about “revolution” but can’t even tell your friend they hurt your feelings. You want to dismantle systems but can’t even make a doctor’s appointment over the phone. You can’t even stand up to your boss.
We are fluent in the aesthetics of liberation, fluent in the language of collectivity, but allergic to the practice of it. However, I get it — saying the right things online feels safer than having to do the awkward, clumsy, low-stakes, and maybe risky things in your actual life. Like checking on a friend, asking for help, or setting a boundary. Or calling something out when it’s happening in front of you, not just when it’s trending.
It’s easy to sound like a radical on Twitter. It’s easy to talk about community gardens when you haven’t even watered your own relationships. It’s easy to say “burn it all down” when you’ve never had to rebuild anything in your own life.
Honestly, I’m intrigued by it. Intrigued by the way we sometimes parade as organizers, healers, artists, and mutual-aid architects, when half of us still flinch at confrontation and most of us are running from the kind of vulnerability and truth that real community demands.
I’m not saying it’s all fake or a fantasy to hope for these changes; but we must first confront the fact that we pretend we’re part of something just so we don’t have to admit how alone we really feel.
Soft but firm reckoning
I know I came in with this pretty strong; again I have done some of the things I’m calling out here. Truth AND accountability really does set you free. But, I’m trying.
I’m trying to stop rehearsing loneliness like it’s my final act. Stop confining myself to my home to hide from the world and only interacting with it through a screen.
Because the truth is, I do want community. Having zero friends nor any “associates” (no exaggeration) is extremely isolating and it starts to mess with your mind. Plus, I want to share my gifts, my love and care, to to others as well. So yes, I want softness that doesn’t require translation. I want people who know how to knock before entering, and also know how to come in anyway when I leave the door cracked. But wanting it isn’t enough. Writing this isn’t enough. I have to build it slowly and imperfectly, with the people already around me (even if it’s just my parents and my dog), not the fantasy of who I think my “tribe” is supposed to be.
So here’s where I’ll leave you (no pun intended there)
Who’s one person you haven’t talked to in a while whom you actually miss? Not someone who hurt you or drains you. Someone you miss.
Why haven’t you called them? Why haven’t you asked them how they’re really doing?
Don’t answer out loud. Just sit with it.
Then maybe, when you’re ready, do something about it.
Thank you for making it this far through my rambling! If you would like to read more from me, follow and subscribe for the latest posts. Also, check out my website here.
D.Smith Writes 