“We’ll be fine.” “Brown has been super safe.” “No one around us has had Corona.” Ah, so young. So naive. Admittedly, this was the opinion of my friends and I for most of the Fall semester. We were being safe, but it was our version of safe. Let’s just say our actions would not model the gold standard of behavior in a CDC Covid pamphlet. In keeping with college-aged human nature, we gave into our vices. That is, we’d frequently wash our hands and stay within our pod during the day, but that hockey boy would definitely be allowed over at night. We’d wear our masks leaving the house, but we’d share our drinks with each other because “if one of us gets it, we’ll all get it anyway.” Well, I’m here to confirm that karma is, in fact, a bitch.
Last week, we got the long-feared text in our roommate group chat: “Guys, I just tested positive. I’m not kidding.” Enter: sheer panic mode. I think everyone has a few moments in her life where the gravity of a situation is so heavy that she knows she’s going to remember it forever. This was one of those moments for me. After a few minutes of floundering and screaming “what the actual fuck” senselessly around my apartment, I felt a strange wave of clarity and made a plan.
I’m very fortunate to live only a few hours’ drive from Brown, and I had access to my own transportation at school. I also have relatively young parents and no one in my family is immunocompromised. All that coupled together meant that I could go home and safely quarantine there. I just so happen to be writing this article from my childhood bedroom with my teddy bear– the one my dad gave me for Valentine’s Day when I was ten– silently judging me for testing positive.
I’m writing this article with a sense of moral obligation. A lot of young people want to contract the virus just to “get it over with” or to have antibodies so they can party without a whim for the next three months. Not only is that logic incredibly dangerous from a public health and safety standpoint, and not to mention ethically reprehensible, but it is also not something one should wish for herself. I could write an entire article on the physical symptoms of Covid. Trust me – they are not fun. But I want to focus on the emotional side of contracting Coronavirus because that has been the most challenging aspect of it for me.
First, Covid has a way of instantly reminding you that every moment is fleeting. It was a weird semester, but it brought me closer with the people I care about most at Brown. After receiving that text, us roommates had to instantly separate and go our own ways, and I haven’t seen them since. Your roommates at school become your family, and not being able to see them, especially during the time you’re supposed to be making memories with them, really sucks, for lack of a better term.
Second, everyone talks about Covid being an incredibly lonely disease, but you don’t really comprehend how isolating it is until it’s you on the danger side of the glass. Never in my life have I not been able to hug the people I love. When I got home, all I wanted to do was throw myself into my mom’s arms, but I couldn’t do that without threatening her safety, or even her life. You don’t realize how much a hug means until you can’t get one. I’m not even a touchy-feely person, so if you are, I’m sure Covid is that much more unbearable.
This crazy week with Coronavirus has taught me to value the little moments I had during the Q at school. My friends and I spent a lot of time dreaming about the day we could be shoved and spilled on in our less-than-there clothing in a steamy, sticky-floored sports house. But now that I’m alone in my childhood home, I find myself dreaming of the red wine and movie nights in our den or the random sleepovers just for the hell of it. Those roommate moments were pretty great, and I’m lucky I got to have them for as long as I did.
So, dear readers, stop fantasizing about crowded frat houses, feel grateful for your roommates and friends, and steer clear of Miss Rona.