My Friends Think I’m Petty

My small group of friends fell apart on June 7th, 2021, when we got infected with COVID-19.

Why we fell apart wasn’t because of health, though. We were lucky. Nobody died, ended up in the hospital, or got long COVID. We’ve all gone back to our normal lives, jobs and hobbies, even working out.

Why we’re not seeing each other anymore is because, according to my friends, I’m being petty. I call it long overdue self-defense.

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My group of four best friends from university was my pandemic bubble. They were pretty much the only people I saw since March 2021, apart from the cashier at the grocery store and the gym instructors. We were all very busy during the lockdowns, too, so we only got together a handful of times.

It was impossible not to see anyone in over a year. It was never certain we wouldn’t get the virus, of course, but most of us tried to keep things as safe as possible. I took long walks and had coffee and beers outside with them. We even had a couple of outdoor birthdays, including mine.

Then it was time for my friend Claudia’s (name changed) birthday. She invited us for lunch and some drinks at her place.

I knew I had no choice but to attend. Claudia is that friend with a big Italian family who needs people to be there for her, physically. And she wouldn’t forgive you if you weren’t there, even if she said she would.

Another reason I decided to go was that we had been having some issues in our friendship, and I wanted to show her I was putting in the work to salvage what was left.

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I got to the restaurant and said hi to everybody in the Argentinian way: with a kiss on the cheek.

As soon as Claudia pronounced her first words, I noticed she was sick.

“A runny nose is a symptom of COVID,” I told her.

“I was just sleeping in a freezing room all weekend, so I have a cold,” she said.

It was in the middle of winter and Argentinian homes aren’t exactly well-insulated from the cold. But I’ve always been allergic to the strange local superstition that breathing cold air will give you a cold, especially in the pandemic. I mean, in Finland we consider it healthy to leave babies to nap outside in the winter.

The damage was already done at this point, when I was breathing the air in the small restaurant. We headed back to Claudia’s apartment, and two more of our friends arrived.

“Don’t worry, it’s just a cold,” she kept repeating whenever someone asked. And everyone did because, well, it was crystal clear that she was sick.

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Two days later, I went outside for a workout. My hangover from all the wine seemed to have lasted longer than usual, and some of my muscles and joints were a little sore.

“It’s probably the cold, I need to warm up better,” I thought, rolling my ankles around from one side to the other, but I still felt some inflammation. Once you hit those late thirties, you can’t drink like you used to.

That night Claudia called me.

“Listen, remember the cold I had? So, it happens that my sister’s boyfriend was having a really bad headache so my sister went to get tested, and she’s got COVID. Sooo…”

At this point, I was still mostly mad about the 14-day quarantine waiting for me. I had no idea of what was coming.

“It’s possible you won’t even get it,” she said. “We had a window open.”

I told her all the reasons why she was wrong. I had followed the situation since February 2020 and read enough about the science to know it was about 100% certain we’d all get sick.

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The next morning, I started to feel a little off. My joints and muscles weren’t actively aching, but they felt funny. I put on my workout clothes to lift some weights inside my apartment, but as soon as I’d thrown my yoga mat on the living room floor I realized I wasn’t okay.

That night, it really started. The worst headache of my life, the virus creeping into my back, finding each one of my muscles and poking at them with knives. I felt the monster attacking my entire body, from my stomach to my nervous system. This was no common cold.

In the course of the next two days, we all got sick.

Claudia called me once and sent me a couple of messages over the next week. My other friends called or texted me every day. On day 8, I found myself on the verge of a panic attack, so I started calling my friends to get my mind off it for a little while. Nobody else was available, so I ended up talking to Claudia. It was a friendly conversation, but I still couldn’t let go of my anger. That was the last time we talked. I stopped calling, and she didn’t make an effort, either.

What irritated me to no measure was the fact that Claudia, a sedentary smoker, got away with a runny nose. I got almost all the symptoms. Whenever I felt a little better, a new one came along.

Headache over? Your back is going to be so sore a shower feels like tiny needles piercing your skin. Fever subsiding? Here’s a cough for you, topped with a sore throat. And when you think it’s over, the fever creeps back. Three weeks from the party, I was still feeling awful. Full recovery took a couple of months. It's time I lost from my life that I'll never get back.

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As the pain, cough and fever finally subsided, I kept going through all the times I had felt uncomfortable in Claudia’s company since the pandemic began. When she wanted to go to bars full of people without masks because it made her feel “normal”. When she’d told me she wasn’t wearing her mask outside anymore, even after I told her why that was potentially dangerous.

Anyone can get COVID. A trip to the grocery store, sharing an elevator, taking a walk, having to go to work. There are many ways to get the virus that don’t make you an irresponsible person.

But there are ways to get this virus that are completely because of your actions. And Claudia had a pattern of behavior that put us all in danger.

We were all irresponsible, that is true. We all knew that in a pandemic, whenever you go out of the house, you might get sick. We decided to take the risk and go see our friend.

“Don’t be so petty,” my friends tell me. “We could have gotten the virus anywhere.”

But we didn’t.

She should have at least let us know, so we would have been able to make an informed decision. Because there’s a difference between deciding to be there for your friend on their birthday, with a small group of people, and deciding to invite your friends over in a pandemic when you know you’re sick.

There’s a difference between putting yourself in a situation you assume will be mostly safe, and someone forcing you into a situation they know might be unsafe.

That difference is selfishness, and it’s a glaring red flag in a friendship.

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Here’s a confession: I am petty.

I’m the person at the gym who will ask you for the StairMaster when you’ve been on it for longer than the permitted 25 minutes, just because I hate it when people aren’t following rules.

When I’m in line at the grocery store and you’re standing too close to me, I will place a cart between us to keep you away. I don’t care whether you think I’m passive-aggressive. I am.

If you’re anti-abortion, I won’t congratulate you on your newborn baby, and I won’t like or comment on the pictures from your toddler’s birthday on Instagram. Why should I be happy for your choices, when you have no respect for mine?

I’m not a great person, and I don’t let go of things easily.

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Almost six months after the birthday I still haven’t talked to Claudia, and that pretty much tore a rift in my group of friends. We haven’t gotten together as a group ever since, and probably won’t for a long time. I heard she doesn’t want to see me, either.

I’m still mad at her, and myself for not letting go of this friendship sooner. I knew Claudia didn’t respect guidelines, even when I specifically asked her to.

Most of all, I’m mad at myself for not enforcing my boundaries. At 36, my health is a serious thing, and I enjoy taking care of myself, physically and mentally. But this virus doesn’t know how much you appreciate your health. It barely gave Claudia a stuffy nose, and it made me lose a month of my life. And it could have gone much, much worse. People my age can die from this virus, but she didn’t care.

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As I said before, we’d had some problems, before and completely unrelated to Covid. I had wondered whether I should start contacting her since the beginning of 2020, when she got irritable and often disrespectful towards me. But I did, because I knew she was going through some tough times and needed other people in her life.

When I took some distance from all of our issues, I realized they all boil down to the same thing: her being too deep in her own issues to treat her friends with consideration and respect.

Sounds pretty awful, but she’s not a bad person. I just think she might be depressed, and could really use a good therapist. She’s too stubborn to admit it, and I’m happy I finally understood I need to respect myself enough to get some space.

But I don’t want to say I’ll never be friends with her again. I hope she does get some help, and we’ll be able to work through it. But she needs to be ready to take responsibility. Not just for COVID, for everything. For now, I feel lighter without her.

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This story was originally published by me, on Medium.