Around this time last year, I was on spring break, but little did I know about how drastically the world around me would change within the span of a couple days. It’s funny to me now how much we underestimated the threat of the virus. I can remember hanging out with my friends during spring break and talking about coronavirus, laughing about how the news and our parents were overreacting and making it a big deal and that everything would be fine. Halfway into break, my friends and I would start receiving the news about how our spring break would be extended for an extra week, and then eventually receiving the news that the rest of our spring semester would be virtual.
Friday the 13th would mark my last day or “normalcy” and from that day on, I would remain quarantined at home, leaving the house every couple weeks only when absolutely necessary. I thought that everything would be back to normal once summer came, and that in the fall I would be back on campus. I’d never thought that one month of lockdown would soon turn into two, and then keep extending with no end in sight.
A year of lockdown has changed my life in every possible way. Both for the worst but also in ways that are good that I’d never thought was possible. I’ve changed so much over the last year, and I’m definitely not the person who I was a year ago.
Lockdown was extremely hard for me at first, and sometimes it still is. I think the hardest part of all of this was watching the apathy that others can have towards human life. It was shocking to me that people felt they were entitled to go out, party, and travel in the midst of a pandemic. Shocking how people had so little regard for the lives or people who were elderly, immunocompromised, or generally more at risk for COVID. It made me lose a lot of hope in humanity. Lockdown was hard, staying home was hard, and knowing that there was no end in sight was hard, but I continue to do it one year later because I know that it is necessary to protect the people around me who are more susceptible. And I would do it all over again if I had to.
Lockdown wasn’t easy on my mental health. All of a sudden, I found myself in a space where I had to work, do school, and live all within the confines of my childhood bedroom. It was hard to shift to doing all of these things from home, in the one place that was supposed to be my escape and refuge from school and work, and I found myself experiencing extreme burnout. Learning how to live with having to do everything from my childhood bedroom has been a learning curve and is sometimes something that I still find myself struggling with, but I have become better at compartmentalizing, mostly because I had no choice.
But there has also been light and growth from all of this. I have learned so much about myself and rediscovered myself in the past year. I have fallen back in love with reading for pleasure instead of just for academic purposes, I have gotten back into art and journaling, and most importantly I feel like I have gotten in tune with my inner child. I’ve developed such a strong sense of self over the last year, and I’ve learned that I do have the capability to be resilient and overcome the mental obstacles that come my way.
One year later, and we are finally starting to see a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. Vaccines are here, and hopefully within the next couple months everyone is able to get vaccinated so that we can achieve herd immunity and end this pandemic. Even after this pandemic is long gone, I think the scar will always remain. The impacts of it were so severe and brutal that I think it’s impossible for it not to leave its mark long after it’s gone. And while it is a brutal scar, it’s also a scar that shows we as humans are resilient, and that we are able to overcome hardship.