by Carlos Medina
January 25, 2023
It was March of 2020 when school was canceled. I thought I was taking a full vacation, yay yay. I saw kids running excitedly out the doors with bright smiles, I was one of them. Of course, I figured I would return back to school in a couple of weeks at most, so I might as well enjoy this leap of absence. I would later find out that was not going to be the case.
The first week was amazing, free of homework, quizzes, and tests. I didn’t even talk to my friends during this first week because I felt fulfilled by my own company. However, as days passed, I began to get bored. I got tired of not doing anything productive. It was also starting to become apparent that going back to school was not a real option, and that scared me.
Establishments like Walmart, Target, and Costco, were having shortages of supplies and were mostly deserted. If I did go to stores, there would be a limit of people who entered, and in most places children were not allowed. For that reason, I stayed in my house, not going anywhere for almost a year. To say the least, I still do not know how I kept my sanity. I was irritated most of the time because I was sick of traveling from my room to the living room to the bathroom, and back again. At most, during the summer months I could go to my backyard and swing on my swing. There, on my red swing, it was like I was flying and my worries temporarily disappeared. But once the winter and fall months hit, it was another story. Of course, I was grateful that my parents still had their jobs and my life needs were met, but it still wasn’t comfortable.
By week four, I started to FaceTime my friends, and loneliness was slowly creeping up on me. Finally, by week nine or ten, remote learning began. It was so strange to transform my environment of relaxation to be a workplace. Speaking of workplaces, a couple weeks after remote learning started, my father had been let go, and was searching for a new job. My mother, who was working a small side job, was our only source of income. Things were starting to take a turn, and the worst part was that I felt it. I saw how things were spirling, and I felt my insides turn. In the beginning of remote learning, it was fine because I was given a list of things to do, and there was no camera watching me complete it. There wasn’t a strict schedule other than everything had to be due by 3pm, but I would still treat it like school because I wanted organization in the midst of all the chaos. However, although it worked for me, it did not work for everyone and so Zoom moved into the picture. Zoom was a pain for so many reasons. Primarily, having to stare at a screen non-stop for hours put a strain on my eyes, which made me buy blue light glasses. Then, the glitching on both my screen and teachers’ screens. If I was put in a breakout room, unless I was friends with the other person, it was so silent that even a whisper would be considered a shout. It was an overall terrible experience because I felt like I was being scrutinized.
Opportunities to go back to school arose, but I wanted to stay at home. I would later regret my decision because staying at home put me in a deep depressive state. It came in waves, but I would cry a lot, all the time. I started to feel anxious during remote learning, and could not focus as well as I had in the beginning. It was because I did not really socialize much with anyone other than my parents that I felt isolated only from the world and got lost in my webs of thought. It all went away, once I returned to school, but it was different. Kids were wearing masks, so I could not recognize anyone. I felt a shift in my peers emotionally too. I think after the pandemic I saw more kids with anxiety and depression than before, and it was understandable. I also felt that there was more separation between friend groups and cliques, whereas before the pandemic I felt like we were more of a connected school.
During lunch, instructions were given for students to be distant from each other, and even had us put up clear plastic paperboards to minimize chances of catching COVID. Then there was the testing; every week I had to spit in a tube sample where I would then be tested for COVID. All the changes were overwhelming me, and it made me hope that this was not going to be the new “regular.” Luckily, as time went on, life was starting to regulate like it used to be pre-pandemic. As a result, my gratitude to life became deeper than ever before. I learned to further appreciate even the seemingly small things in my life from going to the grocery store to living without a mask. To me, COVID-19 was much more than a pandemic as it was a force that changed my life from day to night. However, thankfully, I was able to live with both the Sun and Moon.
