Recently, the one-year anniversary of when COVID-19 took over our world passed. As I watched my Snapchat memories overflow with pictures of me moving out of my dorm room and then suddenly transform into pictures of me back in my hometown, I couldn’t believe it had been a year. Sometimes it feels like longer, like there’s no way that a year ago masks were never a thing that crossed our minds, but sometimes it feels like just yesterday that our lives changed within an instant. A lot has improved in a year, however, some days it also feels like we’re going backwards.
Ecstatic is an understatement when describing how excited I was when I found out that I was allowed back on campus this semester. I did my best to prepare myself for the fact that it was going to be very different, and trust me it is, especially with living in a dorm. It’s hard sometimes to see the changes and restrictions that the pandemic has brought to my school and my life, but I continued to remind myself that being here was still better than being stuck in my hometown for another semester. At least I was living with my friends, and getting some twisted version of a “college experience”, even if that meant eating dining hall takeout on the floor of my friend’s room, and making every weekend a “staying-in night”.
But then I go on Snapchat, or Instagram, or even TikTok. I see people posting pictures almost every weekend of things that you would think had to be taken pre-pandemic, but nope, they were taken that day. I have no choice but to think “Why can they go about their normal lives but I can’t?”. Because I’m doing the right thing, but then why does doing the right thing make me feel like I’m wasting the best 4 years of my life? As much as I want to go about my normal life and just be a regular college student again, it’s impossible. I would never be able to do any of it without feeling an insane amount of guilt about putting myself and the people I love at risk. Doing the right thing should make someone feel a sense of pride, or at least some form of positive emotion, but all I feel is that I’m missing out.
As hard as it is to see people in other states do whatever they want, I know I’m doing this for a reason. To be completely honest though, it really sucks. I would do anything to be packed into a backyard on a 70-degree day with all my friends. But for now, all we can do is turn a blind eye to what’s going on, and continue to hope and wait for the day when all of us can return to normalcy the right way, without putting the health of others at risk.