Well, 2020 surely hasn’t been the exciting and prosperous year we all had hoped it would be. It started off seemingly normal and uneventful, and then in came the infamous spring break vacation that lasted us six long months. Looking back on it now, I am not quite sure why I (and so many others) believed that this global pandemic would be over by the summertime. Many of us college students knew for certain that by June we would be back outside without a single care in the world…. WRONG!
Last March, Coronavirus 2019 aka COVID-19 aka Corona aka Rona aka Miss Rona took our entire world and flipped the damn thing upside down. She then proceeded in jerking and knocking us (and our emotions) all around like a rag doll within the following months. COVID-19 has given us no mercy, and it continues to keep most of us sheltered in our homes and paranoid of any potential dangers when we step outside.
My experience with this pandemic, in some ways, has been like many others’ around the globe. I have been on a rollercoaster of emotions with very low lows and some surprisingly high highs. Below is a list of the phases of my Coronavirus experience:
Phase 1: A lil worried (Early January/February)
Phase 2: Forgot about it (It hadn’t hit the U.S. yet so it’s all good, right?)
Phase 3: Coronavirus? Wait…what?! (Spring Break)
Phase 4: 21,21,21! (I had a quarantined 21st birthday. It was fun!)
Phase 5: Damn. This stuff is real and I’m high key terrified! (Late March/Early April)
Phase 6: Ughhhhh Zoom university sucksssss. (April/May)
Phase 7: Loving the family bonding! (I really enjoyed myself at home with my family.)
Phase 8: School is over. Time to be an essential worker. (Early May).
Once late May had rolled around, I had already begun getting used to this pandemic being our “new normal”. I was working a lot, spending time with family, and just trying my best to stay sane during such difficult times. Then on May 25th, 2020 times got much, much more difficult.
This was the day an unarmed Black man named George Floyd died by the act of police brutality. His death was like the straw that broke the camel’s back for the Black community and it immediately ignited the flame of our revolution.
I was quickly reminded that even though there was a global pandemic going on that was affecting everyone from various cultures and backgrounds in the same ways, did not mean that we were united. For a split second, COVID-19 made it seem as if we were all one heart bleeding the same blood and praying the same prayers, but that was never the case.
You see, I could’ve continued listing my phases and titled those moments “Phase 9: George Floyd killing (Late May)” and “Phase 10: Black Lives Matter protests (May-Present)”. However, if I did that, I would’ve been telling a lie because those two moments have not just been phases in my life; they are my life. Being Black in America and all the bullshit that often comes with it is not some fleeting thing or emotion for me like the others on my list; it’s a constant fight. COVID may have been the pandemic to spin the Earth off its axis in 2020, but racism, systematic racism, and police brutality has been a crippling disease for people like me for over hundreds of years.