You and I are caught in a hurricane. Surrounding us is a torrential downpour and vicious winds that tear into trees and buildings, causing chaos. Waves crash against windows distorted by the faint bleak light that leaks through the cloud canopy. Encompassed by mayhem, we are constrained to the eye of the storm with only one way to go.
Up.
…at least, that is what it has felt like these past two years.
It really has been incomprehensible how much has happened in only 730 days. I remember that feeling that came with the news of covid. It was a mixture of worry and bravado, a mask of apathy over the bubbling insecurity. At first, I thought that it was something that could be ignored. After all, it seemed impossible that one person’s action from halfway across the world could cause any repercussions, much less any that actually affect me specifically. I was wrong.
I remember waking up one day and getting a barrage of messages on my phone. I had three texts from my mom, a couple emails from the school, and an advertisement sent from Amazon about some random item they wanted me to get. Groggily, I whipped up the messenger app and took a look at my mom’s messages and got to see every single one of my college plans go out the window. My first year of college was to be cut short, and I would have to finish all of the classes I was currently taking from home. Even though I was a fully grown adult, I do not think I grasped the totality of the situation. The hurricane had started outside my window, but I never really looked at it. I ended up packing all of my bags up and heading home. The drive back (about 4 and a half hours) was exhausting for my head. All I could think about were the ways this hurricane would affect me and my life. This hurricane waged for a while longer, and it still flurries a bit to this day. Here and there you hear about an infection or an insurrection, but the wind has died down. However, I am still within the eye. The events that collapsed the world around me put a spotlight on me. The only thing I could focus on was myself; on improving as a person and becoming someone that I could be proud of. I started learning piano and I began to go to the gym. I reached out to people I had not talked to in a while. I stood in the eye of the storm and looked straight up at the sky. That may sound a bit pretentious, but I genuinely think I have become better. The situation was grim, but I made the most of it.
Cheesecakeify My Opinion 
Reporting from the flurries the past week here. Covid-19 is still around, and still no fun. But it seems we’ve kind of decided to push on anyway.
I think the experience you had with the pandemic is not unique. I think I have come out the other end a better and more empathetic person. I have certainly learned to take the small things in stride more gracefully. I’m glad someone else shares the experience of being able to work on themself through the weird and hard times.
More than anything, I feel the pandemic stressed how much we rely on each other every day, and how we should value and maintain the relationships that give our lives meaning and connect us to our corners of the world, and that’s work that can and should continue even past a hypothetical time when the pandemic comes to an “end.”
LikeLike