Count us extroverts in

Welcome to the first quarter of 2020, the rise of social distancing — and perhaps the hardest time for extroverts.

Many extroverts like me may have scratched our heads upon learning that we needed to undergo community quarantine; most likely, the unease of being alone will get to us way faster than the virus. But this is what should be done to stop the chain of contagion, so extroverts with the means to follow precautionary measures have no excuse.

Social distancing has been painful. I, for one, get my energy from people, and I thrive as a member of a crowd. I do not consider solitude as a close friend, but an acquaintance allowed to visit only from time after time. Work from home has been a struggle. I work best in a setting where I see people and I hear everyday noises around me. Being stuck in a room all by myself has meant that my productivity is at a standstill. Amid the mental health toll this has caused, however, has come a reexamination of priorities: We need to stay put for our own and others’ protection.

Thankfully, social distancing has slowly become bearable. As the community quarantine grinds on, it’s becoming clearer that, despite the physical isolation, we can still form social relationships and come together in ways we hadn’t imagined. The thing is, social distancing can be a misleading term. As pointed out by professor Ging Gutierrez, a colleague at the UP Diliman sociology department, social distance refers to the strength or weakness of our bond with others. It is not the social space between us that we expand in order to prevent the spread of COVID-19, but only the physical space between us.

The isolation is taxing, but I have seen a lot of friends still come through for me. I have been alone in my dorm room for almost two weeks now. It has admittedly been lonely, but the loneliness becomes endurable through constant messages of concern and reassurances from people I love. Reframing the situation from social distancing to physical distancing has helped me warm up to solitude.

There are alternative ways to maintain social relationships even without the help of physical space. I was both shocked and amused to realize that I was learning more about other people, and vice versa, despite the situation. Many of my online friends asked me about the books I love to read, and then sent me links to those books. The situation was also ripe for reaching out to people I had always wanted to get to know better. We are all braving through a pandemic, and the collective anxiety brought about by this public health crisis means that most of us are looking for ways to feel connected, too.

Under a national state of emergency like what we are experiencing today, people come up with creative strategies to give each other support. In many parts of the world, we have seen how different nationalities have encouraged one another to wade through this pandemic: Italian people singing from their balconies and the Chinese chanting from their condominiums, among others. Despite staying put at home, people have also found ways to thank the brave frontliners who are out there battling the outbreak for us. Spain, France, and the Netherlands, for example, have set a time off each day to applaud their health workers.

Social distancing has become the mandate of the day. But COVID-19 is a public health crisis that can only be defeated when people come together — not physically, but virtually as well as psycho-socially. So to fellow extroverts out there who find it hard to make it through, remember that we are in this collectively. You are not alone.

Athena Charanne “Ash” R. Presto, 23, teaches at the sociology department of the University of the Philippines Diliman. She tweets at @sosyolohija.