By Lea Bdeir | Staff Writer
“It’ll only be two weeks,” they said… but it’s been two years.
Lockdowns, Zoom Birthdays, mandatory IMPACT exemption forms for permission to leave the house, home workouts, daily walks, “I’m positive” text messages.
That was our reality two years ago. Although that reality still seems to return every few months, it feels like another lifetime ago. Looking back at that time, seconds seemed like days and the world was at a standstill. It seemed like everything scared us because a “simple cough” could have spread the variant into our immune system; not only making us ill but any person we were in contact with. No one knew what the virus was exactly or how serious the symptoms were; except those who created and spread conspiracy theories on a daily basis that baffled the minds of medical professionals. We feared each other and turned against one another in a sense. Masks and hand sanitizer became more essential than phones at that stage.
We were in school, a typical morning. Our administration instructed teachers to present an informative video about the new virus spreading. They emphasized the importance of sanitizing and wearing masks and continued on with their lectures. The next day, lockdown began. The term itself sounds apocalyptic. “Lockdown”, “quarantine”, “virus”, “variant”, and “death”. The horror!
It started out as schools closing for the week and we couldn’t be happier. Attending lectures from the comfort of our homes seemed like a pleasant experience. But it quickly became something students exploited. They began to develop lower attention spans over the course of a year. They couldn’t focus or even find the motivation to study and maintain their grade point averages. “What’s the point?”
We didn’t know what was coming our way and we couldn’t anticipate how much it would escalate. How could we adapt to the new normal when we didn’t understand what “normal” was? We now ask questions like: “How could we possibly have woken up that early? How did we go out without a mask? How could we ever get sick with the “regular” flu without mistaking it for a deadly virus?”
Aside from the possibility that our physical health was at risk, our mental health was on the verge of a breakdown. That was because there was nothing we could possibly do. We had nowhere to go and we were trapped in the vicinity of a four-wall bedroom; sometimes feeling like they were closing in on us. Communication stopped because there was really nothing to talk about, we couldn’t make friends or keep those that we had. Some students had no graduation ceremony after all their years of education and hard work. Others had no senior year and none of us had the option to go back to life as we knew it.
It wasn’t all bad; we had to make the most out of it ourselves. The thing with time is that it never stops, even when the entire world does. Many people took this time as an advantage to transform their bodies and minds; they were motivated to modify their lifestyles and target health goals through home workouts and exercising. Others learned to bond with their families and take up different hobbies like art, exercise, dance, writing.
We took the time we had always needed.
Others unfortunately did not experience lockdown in a positive manner. As they sat with their thoughts, they developed depression and anxiety. They lost motivation in their education and fell into a pit of despair. Many people even came out of isolation more socially anxious, afraid to make friends or meet people. Sitting within those walls opened the door to the vulnerability to mental illness. Overachievers wanted to perfect themselves and may have destroyed themselves in the process, while others simply forgot how to interact with people.
But now here we are, two years and two vaccine shots later. We are still wearing our masks, dealing with new variants, and recovering from all we endured. Some of us don’t recall how those dreadful two years passed, while others are still stuck in that time. We all discovered and lost parts of ourselves and there is still so much lost time we have yet to recover. Despite all that, we did grow. We became resilient. We explored different hobbies and tried to master them. Moreover, those who adopted new lifestyle changes most likely still implement them to this day.
To say that COVID-19 changed our lives would be an understatement. But here we are, two years later, ready for anything that might come our way.