With Covid on the rise again, I’ve been feeling a little anxious. When Covid first hit, I’m sure as many of you, I was anxious about getting sick. I didn’t want all the symptoms that came with this new virus, and I didn’t want to give it to my family. I was just starting college at Chico State, and I was set on staying healthy and staying at school. Well a mere five days after move- in I tested positive. I was devastated, and honestly very scared. I was already starting to feel symptoms and I was sent home to quarantine.
For the next ten days I was confined to my room. But i didn’t get to just sleep and watch shows all day, it was my first week of school. My first week of college. I had to join zoom classes each day and try to not fall behind. I was scrambling to get the books I needed and get organized. It was quite possibly the worst way to start school. A few days in, most of my symptoms subsided but I completely lost my taste and smell. So here I was, attempting to complete my work, and go to class while I was completely miserable. I couldn’t meet any of my classmates, nor my teachers. I couldn’t see friends or family, and I couldn’t be on campus.
On one of the last days of my quarantine I received an email with even further bad news; my campus was closing for the semester. If you lived in the dorms you had a week to come pick up your things from your room and head home. There went my freshman year of college. I didn’t know what I was going to do. Many freshmen chose to find off campus housing in Chico and do classes online from there. I knew that wasn’t what I wanted to do. I wanted the living on campus experience. So once my quarantine was over, I got all my stuff and moved back home after just five days on campus.
In the following weeks I began to realize a significant change in my mental health. My anxiety was worse than it had even been. I have always dealt with anxiety, but this was a debilitating kind of anxiety. I had trouble leaving the house because I was living in such fear. Each day I woke up with a full day in front of me, and nothing to fill it. I had a small amount of school work, a zoom class and that was it. Almost all of my friends were away at school, and almost every establishment was closed due to covid. The things that I used to fill my time with were no longer available to me. My mind was never occupied and that left room for lots of dark thoughts. In addition to my anxiety, I was experiencing brain fog. This was something I had never had before. It was hard for me to focus on things, especially reading and schoolwork. This made any school very hard for me to complete and it was extremely frustrating. After some research I found that Covid and anxiety were two huge factors in brain fog, which made perfect sense for me.
All these things combined put me in a really dark place for a while. For that reason, I now have a much bigger fear of quarantine and lockdowns than I do of being sick. For me personally the circumstances of Covid really affected me more than the actual illness did. It’s now more than a year later and my brain fog and anxiety are almost completely healed. They still have their moments, but I’m in a much better place.
All this being said I’m hoping for a semi normal semester this spring and that we all stay happy and healthy!