Carla

Carla is a 26-year old woman who before the Covid-19 pandemic worked as a music venue and tour manager. She is originally from South America and has been living in the UK for the last decade.

Carla talked about experiencing loneliness as a teenager in her homeland as well as in the context of the pandemic. From a young age, Carla recalls feeling disconnected from her homeland’s culture, which she describes as corrupt and patriarchal. Although she had a circle of social friends around her, she didn’t feel connected with the local community and wanted to find a place where she could feel a sense of belonging. Carla found that in the UK.

Carla worked for the music industry which was massively impacted by the restrictions and social distancing measures that have been imposed on the public to contain the spread of Covid-19. Carla’s social circle quickly shrank and she lost part of her identity due to social isolation. In Carla’s view, physical interaction is a basic human need and if not met could affect mental health. Although Carla sees video chats as useful, she says the subtitles aren’t easy to read and their are limits to just using our audio and visual senses.

Carla described the vicious cycle loneliness creates by stripping people of their motivation to reach out and ultimately contributing to more severe mental health problems.

Carla says that being alone for a long time can impact on a sense of community and damage people’s social skills. She was concerned that society would remain cautious about social interaction in the long term.

Carla’s job and identity centred around being sociable so lockdown brought a feeling of loneliness she had never experienced before.

I just feel down, and I feel bored and I feel like that I don’t have like an objective or a purpose or anything to be going towards. I feel kind of lost and I remember that I have never felt lost when I was doing stuff because I was creating something, I was doing something, I was talking to people to get things done. Now I feel like there is nothing for me to do besides watching tele and watching more tele. There are people on tele that are all together and having fun and I’m just there on the couch

It’s that feeling of being inactive?

Yes, and a lot of like lack of motivation that comes with it. I think it’s a little bit of a vicious circle. So it comes like lack of motivation because I don’t have anything to do because I can’t go and see anyone because I can’t meet them in person. Cause I can’t discuss things because nothing generates out of that. So, I’m unmotivated because id don’t have any projects so it keeps going and snowballing.

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Carla discussed feeling disconnected from the culture of her homeland from a very young age and wanting to move abroad.

How did you decide to leave your life in [country] and move somewhere else?

I always grew up with the idea that I kind of really didn’t fit in that particular culture I was around, and I obviously as most of us did, I grew up watching television and I never thought that it was going to be [city] or [city] but I always had the idea that I wasn’t going to spend my whole life there and I wanted to explore, and I wanted to kind of find my own place. And it happened that I applied to a bunch of universities for the exchange and it just happened that I got accepted to [city], so I just came here.

I found it fascinating that you talked about being different within your own culture- could you elaborate on that?

For example, the music I liked, no one liked. The books I liked, no one liked they were not cool. The place where I’m from is very one-track minded so you either fit in and follow the common rule or you’re a little bit of an outcast and I never really fitted in and followed the common rules so I was a bit of an outcast. So, I don’t know whatever programmes on the local tv I didn’t like so I looked for the foreign ones. I mean obviously I had friends, I had a social circle, it didn’t prevent me from socialising or relating to other people. But for example if they’re like, ‘Oh, let’s go to the night club” and I’d be like ‘I’d hate that, it’s not my thing so I’ll see you tomorrow’. It’s just like different kind of styles, like I hate football and if I ever had to watch sports, I’d rather watch basketball, but they’re obsessed with football over there. So, it’s just I had to be different with everything. But it wasn’t because I wanted to, it was because I legitimately didn’t like it.

Why?

I don’t know- there was just something about it that kind of made me wanna puke. [both laughing] It’s just like I don’t like how, like the whole political aspect for example of football. It’s always so big what the politicians do which is really, really corrupt- so everytime a politician does something bad, all the newspapers have football on the front pages to distract everyone from it. I could see right through it. Everyone was like; ‘oh no they won this cup or that cup’ and I was like “it doesn’t matter, they are stealing money off us!’ and they are all like’ oh you such a dampener on my parade’. “NO they are”

It is a corrupted country?

Very bad; these last ten years have been very, very bad.

In that respect, did you feel a little bit alone in relation to your culture?

Oh, yeah, absolutely, I always felt like I was by myself. Even here in [city], there are lots of [people from native country] here and I don’t relate to a single one. Like a lot of people when they emigrate and they go to a different country, or to a different city particularly somewhere as cosmopolitan as [city] is, they found, they have a niche of people, the Spaniards are with the Spaniards, the Italians are with the Italians, and the Turkish are with the Turkish I see an [people from native country] and I run the opposite way. I don’t even like speaking Spanish anymore.

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Carla thinks loneliness stops her reaching out to other people.

In that sense, do you think loneliness changes the way that you look at yourself? The light under which you look at yourself? That makes you see yourself in a different light?

I think it has more to do with mood and with motivation. I feel like loneliness is a double-edged sword because it hurts you on one side and on the other side, it kind of prevents you from breaking the cycle.

Could you explain that to me a little more?

So I feel like when feel lonely, my mood gets dragged so low that I don’t have the motivation to do something to feel less lonely. So, I feel bad because I’m lonely and I feel worse because I can’t get around to doing something that will make me feel better.

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Carla says having a pet makes her feel needed.

Maybe something about pets. I feel like pets are really helpful with loneliness as well, I feel like maybe sometimes when I’m feeling down or feeling lonely, my cat just jumps on top of me and starts meowing at me because he wants to be fed or something. It is something that is a responsibility that I need to get up and do. So I feel like it prevents me from getting worse and worse and being and getting down the hole kind of because he needs me- I am relevant, I’m needed, I mean something and that kind of makes me feel less lonely.

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