(March 12, 2021)

It’s been a… long year. I currently don’t feel anything after being cooped up in my house for ages. I do however, remember talking with my friends around this time before everything had shut down for us. Although me staying home for the rest of the semester didn’t affect me, I was sad for my friends who looked forward to prom and graduation. The parts where I really struggled with was when I had to keep up doing work. It was anxiety inducing. It got to the point where after 3-5 weeks was where I went off the grid and only did my required classes.

Although most classes for that semester didn’t change in terms of work, my English class was the worst of it all. I remember staying up until 10am to do prompts and I was in a cycle of procrastination, anxiety, and wariness. The subject matter at hand as well as how much the teacher gave us was extremely hard on my mental health. I knew he wanted us to be informed and make sure we fully understood what was currently happening at the time and still is happening, but reading a passage around 20-40 pages on racism and how institutional everything in America has been was really damaging to my psyche.

 Unfortunately, at the time of when I started getting even more depressed, I was on twitter a lot. The cruel actions of the police, the government, and the lack of care put into how others were treated as well as anti-maskers or the alt right trending constantly every day had done a number on me. And to put this into how stressed I was, the assignments kept piling up. Doing an essay on racial injustice every single week was terrible. With how strict and chaotic things were, I stayed inside unless I felt like I was going completely insane.

A lot of my bad habits had really appeared during this year. Thankfully now I think I’m a lot more focused. But honestly, entering college at this time felt very risky. Due to a couple of tech issues I had to apply for my first semester of college last minute as well as setting up an account. Both things involved a lot of social interaction with strangers, so it was odd. Of course, my family helped me, but I was stressed out. And after graduating high school, I didn’t look back to many people. I couldn’t take it so I cut off a lot of people. I do feel like it was worth it though. I’ve been reflecting a lot during this pandemic and it’s a give and take relationship. Nothing completely devastating physically but emotionally, I’ve been through a lot.

Also, in response to the last prompt, if a teenager in 20 years from now on asked me what my experience was like, I would tell them that it was like being in limbo. Being painfully aware of all the death tolls, the nonbelievers in the vaccine or the pandemic itself, having to be separated from your friends physically, staying cooped up in your house and religiously watching what the government would do and if there was going to be any breakthrough for a vaccine yet. It always felt like a huge disconnect whenever I went out. I was blessed with the fact that my parents didn’t seem to contract anything and we could continue living in our house but it never stopped the stress and questions from coming. I don’t know how to explain it but we’ve all been through a lot.