The frantic search for community in a new place

-Steff Malherbe

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Moving to a new continent has been wonderful and challenging in so many ways. My mind has pretty much felt like an old t-shirt in a washing machine since I arrived; spinning around and around, struggling to grasp onto anything for too long. Which has been pretty great to be honest; I haven’t really felt homesick yet, but at the same time, I feel like the move here is not permanent. I am in a kind of dream state, living a life that isn’t mine. However, the one thing that has managed to ground me in Bristol, has been my frantic search for community.

I am lucky enough to have a wonderful, supportive circle back home; one I probably didn’t appreciate enough when I had it at my doorstep. I have spent a lot of time on the phone with loved ones, which has allowed me to feel close to home and the happenings there. No matter how much one speaks over the phone though, there is an undoubtable human-to-human element missing. I leave these interactions feeling full, but slightly unfulfilled. I spend 30 minutes to an hour speaking to someone I love dearly; I am able to catch up on everything they have been doing since I last called, as well as update them on my life here. But once the line goes dead, I am left alone. The static of my earphones bouncing awkwardly through my ear canals. As a big hugger, my body feels deprived of the physical contact that goodbye would have had in person. I want to make it clear, that I am by no means trying to slight technology. I cannot fathom how I would have done this without it. If I could only communicate with my family and friends through one, quick long distance phone call a month, or worse, a letter back and forth every six to eight weeks, I would turn on my heels fast enough to give myself whiplash and levitate home.

I have been watching the latest season of White Lotus along with the rest of the world, and there was a scene in one of the episodes that really stuck with me: Timothy Ratliff, the patriarch of an American family of five, visits the temple where his daughter wants to move to for a year. He has been instructed by his wife to talk to Luang Por Teera, the monk in charge of the temple, to figure out why their daughter wishes to come and live here. The interaction goes something like this:

TIMOTHY RATCLIFF:

My daughter wants to join.. whatever this is…

LUANG POR TEERA:

And you want to understand why. Many young people come here from your country. I think because, maybe, spiritual malaise. Lost connection with nature, with the family. Lost connection with the spirit. What is left? The self. Identity. Chasing money, pleasure. Yeah? Everyone runs from pain towards the pleasure. But when they get there, only to find more pain. You cannot outrun pain.

It reminded me of my instinct to search for community in this new place I now call home. When moving here, I was far less concerned with learning directions or going to must-see places around town, than I was about meeting people who would hopefully form part of my network. I signed up for various Yoga and Pilates studio’s welcome packages, using them to suss out the women around me to try and see who I might get on with. Dance classes were another example of this. I attended classes I loved, but also others I had no interest in in the hopes that I would meet my people.

Luang Por Teera speaks of not being able to outrun pain. I don’t think I had any particular pain I was trying to escape from when I moved. But something which has followed me, which I am not too stoked about, is the mundane nature of everyday life. When you first move to a new place, everything is so exciting and shiny, untouched and unknown. But once you have settled in, that new place becomes ‘home’ and the ordinariness of life continues as it did where you lived before. It was at this point when my cry for community became even louder – the mundanity was starting to overtake the exciting nature of being somewhere different, which made the lack of friends around to support me a little too clear for my liking.

The monologue also makes me think of the shift from communal spaces to individual solutions: Communal spaces like church, libraries, clubs, exercise classes, and offices have been replaced by practices such as meditation, therapy, working remotely, and exercising at home. I am guilty of almost all of these individualistic rituals. Working remotely has pretty much done the opposite of help me find a community. But don’t worry, I pay a whopping £120 a month to type-away at a co-working space where I am too shy to speak to anyone. At least there are warm bodies around me.

The way my social algorithms are set up, I think, sometimes mistake my phone for a kind of community in the palm of my hand. But parasocial relationships are a real and scary thing which very quickly get out of hand. The other day I started crying when I realised one of the women I follow on TikTok eventually gave birth to her second child. When I registered the tears streaming from my eyes while watching her birth announcement, I went straight to my settings and tightened my screen time limits. I then went on a walk and called my best friend. When I got home later that night, I tried to figure out how, and why, I had become so invested in the lives of online strangers. As embarrassing as it is to admit, I think it probably has a lot to do with the fact that being in a new place means not knowing a lot of people. I have been craving close friendships, with close proximity, and I projected that longing onto some random content creators who don’t know I exist.

Trying to make new friends as an adult is scary. It’s mortifying putting yourself out there – both walking up to random people in the wild and creepily sliding into someone’s DMs. But the times I have managed to convince myself to do it have been so rewarding. In my experience, people are far more open to new connection than you might think. I have in no way perfected the Friendship Making Process, but I am certainly improving. My community is slowly growing, my screen-time is reducing and I haven’t cried about a stranger’s birth in about a week. I would say this is a solid start!