When I got that fateful email from my university in March saying that we would be sent home immediately due to COVID-19, I cried. A lot.
I was in a motel on the outskirts of New Orleans for a spring break trip. Despite the rapid onset of near-universal quarantining a week later, it was pretty normal. We walked around the Garden District and the French Quarter during the day; we roamed the jazz bars and clubs of Bourbon Street and Frenchman Street at night. Over the course of the week, news had started to break of universities shutting down, though at this point it was mostly a temporary thingâspring break would be elongated for an extra week or two. COVID felt far off; I didnât give it a second thought as I wandered through packed streets and tightly packed rooms, where people from all over the world passed through daily.
My friends and I spent the remainder of that night in the motel, not because we were suddenly more conscious of COVID, but because we were too heartbroken to move. No matter how we might have complained about tests or the stress of being away from home, the immediate realization that we werenât going to have the rest of our semester felt like a devastating blow. We loved our school, our friends, and the freedom of being on our own. To have that taken away so quickly, to be back in environments which for many of us werenât the most conducive to good mental health, was a truly tragic proposition.
But then I did go home, to my parentsâ new place in Montana, far away from my friends and childhood in the Bay Area. This physical distance from everything I knew and everyone but my immediate family terrified me. To make it worse, Iâve always known my mental health to be directly correlated with my social interaction. When I see people Iâm happy; when I donât Iâm sad. Being in Montana, doing nothing but school for who knows how many months, seemed like a recipe for emotional disaster.
To my surprise, my time in Montana was actually pretty great. Not only did I get to spend time with my familyâsomething thatâs pretty hard to come by these daysâI got to spend time with myself. Without the potential to hang out with friends or deal with the woes of modern dating, I was able to cultivate the parts of myself that so often go ignored. I hiked every day, I sewed, I played music, I read. I spent more time alone than I ever had in one period of time, and I really enjoyed it.Â
So now Iâm back at school in Atlanta, taking my classes online and living with a friend in an apartment off campus, with most of my close friends nearby. We donât go out, but we see our inner circle pretty regularly, making my social life a sort of makeshift version of what I had last year. I still get the freedom of being away from homeâeven more so now that Iâm living outside the dorms. While I love it hereâmy friends, my school, AtlantaâI canât help but notice the irony that while Iâve been here, my mental health has been worse than the whole time I was quarantined in Montana.
Part of it is unforeseen personal stuff. The death of a family member, the death of a cat, heartache. But I donât think itâs just thatâwhen I was at home, I never felt that I was missing out on anything. Everyone was completely isolated. I had people to miss, but they were in the exact same situation.Â
But now, I have people I could be around. And that makes it so much harder. When I feel lonely, I feel inadequate. When I stay in doing homework for the weekend instead of exploring Atlanta or seeing a friend, I feel like Iâm wasting time.Â
Sometimes it feels like Iâm reaching for something thatâs goneâa time when we didnât have to be alone so much, when we were allowed to be carefree. So inevitably, when it doesnât measure up to what we used to have pre-COVID, Iâm left feeling disappointed and a little bit empty.Â
For me and many of my friends, and I would go so far as to say young people at large, this fall has become an odd sort of pandemic-era purgatory. Most people I know are still following some level of social-distancing guidelines, but have rolled back their personal level of comfort to allow for small gatherings of inner-circle friends. They donât think about COVID with the regularity that they did when it was a new concern, but itâs still there, looming in the back of their minds.Â
Restrictions have loosened, but we all know deep down that they shouldnât have. So itâs unclear whether we should be metaphorically holding our breath for a vaccine, or pretending that this way of life is normal. Thatâs exhausting.
I donât have a great solution for how to deal with COVID blues. Iâm not sure thereâs a way to sustainably make ourselves feel better, when itâs so clear that things arenât okay. But it is okay to feel whatever it is youâre feeling, even if you think youâre coming a bit late to the party. Cut yourself some slack, and have faith that weâll get through this. Donât settle for pretending this is normal.
By Sheena Holt
Illustration by Ashley Boling
1 comment
Insightful commentary on this strange journey we are on in 2020.
Looking forward to more! đ