The past six months have not been what any of us expected, I mean, if anyone did expect a global pandemic, I would be concerned. These six months were not as kind to me as I wanted them to be.
It started great. I had to move back home and away from my roommate which was not part of my 2020 summer plan, but once I moved back home with my family, it was lovely. The family hadn’t all been together in a while as both my older sister and I were in university. I started strong, I spent my days making tiktoks, bothering my siblings and I was fully committed to a work-out plan. I stayed up late, slept-in every day and felt like I was on a vacation. Days turned into weeks which turned into months and suddenly it started feeling like a lifetime.
By early April, I had completely lost myself. Every day I would wake up in a fog, upset at the world and at the fact that the day was going to be the same as the one before and the one tomorrow. I don’t know how I got to this place but it was the worst I had ever felt.
I stopped working out, stopped going outside, hanging out with my siblings and calling my friends. I was overwhelmed with thoughts, like never being able to hug my friends again or even sit in a car or go on late-night drives listening to my ‘throwbacks of the 2000s’’ playlist that I had crafted with my friends. My brain spiralled and I couldn’t stop thinking about worst-case scenarios and it took a large toll on my mental health. My family began to notice and started asking me what was wrong and I honestly didn’t know what to say.
Before quarantine, my mental state had been the best it had ever been. I was getting good grades, living with my best friends and most importantly, I felt like I had control over my brain.
A lot of people have been saying that quarantine was exactly what they needed and that they grew so much these past six months. Personally, I felt like I shrunk.
Now, I’m not writing this article to make anyone feel bad about how they spent their quarantine or to bring up past unpleasant memories of early quarantine, not at all. Quarantine treated everyone differently, and everyone coped with it in their own ways; no one dealt with it the same and I’m sure everyone has vastly different opinions. As a writer with a platform, I figured I’d share my experience in case anyone shared a similar one and felt alone and like they were the only ones with the same feelings.
I’m sure everyone is so curious as to how my quarantine ended and how I’m doing now, of course. Well, I guess I can please the extremely large crowd that I’m sure is reading this and finish the article.
As the months went on, I started growing tired of the person I had become. I missed it when I was happy and when I could get through a day without having some sort of breakdown. The first actionable item I pursued was talking to my parents. I know a lot of people don’t have that option, simply due to the relationship they possess with their parents, but that doesn’t mean you can’t talk to someone else. Try a friend, or maybe a teacher you trust.
One night I hit my breaking point and just cried a lot. My parents gave me advice and kept reminding me that this was temporary, even if I didn’t believe it. It helped to have that reminder every day because I was not telling myself that at the time. My friends were also a huge help. Phone calls with friends are part of what got me through this rough patch, as well as binging Too Hot To Handle on Netflix to pass the time. Knowing that I wasn’t alone with this feeling was comforting.
There isn’t one thing I did or that happened that just fixed everything–I wish it had been that easy. It came to me in a series of small things; I started having game nights with my family, zoom-calling more often and tried to start working out again. I started looking forward to the little things, like getting to call my friends every night and being on the phone for hours, telling myself that they were willing to talk later got me through a lot of the days. It wasn’t the same as the beginning of quarantine, but it was a start. I reached out to my old boss and asked him if I could start working again. I realized that if I didn’t start doing things or actively trying, I was never going to get out of the hole I was in. I wasn’t trying at all when it first started, I can admit that. I wasn’t actively doing anything to at least try and decrease the strength of the mental toll I was experiencing.
It was a trial and error process. I tried baking to pass the time, which did not go so well, so I resumed working out. My boss rejected my proposal at first due to the lack of customers, but he reached out later asking me to come back, which I am immensely grateful for. Just getting the smallest feel of normalcy back was a huge help. I started going on socially distanced walks with friends that lived close and that also helped a lot.
Now, I feel more like myself. Not as strong as I used to be, but I know I’ll get there with time. Despite taking many mental steps back these past six months, I am finally taking steps forward, which I can only hope will happen for those who went through the same quarantine-experience as I did.
With all that being said, my takeaways from quarantine were as follows: you are never alone, nothing is permanent and for however many steps back you take, you’re more than capable of taking that many steps forward.