By Lhamo
I have been in quarantine for almost half a year, yet it still feels like there is no end in sight. I’ve been fortunate enough to have not caught Coronavirus thus far (at least, I think so, because I had a terrible “flu-like” disease in January that no doctor could definitively diagnose and I swear it was the silent killer), although my parents know of people who’ve died and I know of people who’ve carried it. I have collected more than enough masks and keep hand sanitizer bottles in every bag. I cross the street when someone is walking towards me. I keep my head down when I’m running through the park. I no longer can remember the euphoria of dancing in the rain after parties at two in the morning. I no longer can remember waiting in line for tacos in the scorching July heat. I no longer can remember normalcy. It’s all a haze, a distant memory that I long to relive.
I’ve been in quarantine for almost half a year yet it’s almost like I predicted that my dreams would never materialize. I come from strict parents. I live in a flat on the third floor of a temple and none of my friends are allowed inside. Sure, I had left home to go to boarding school three-thousand miles away when I was thirteen. I had been to a number of summer sleepaway camps. I even lived at my boyfriend’s house for a month (this one took too many speeches to finally convince my parents to allow.) Yet when I think about my gap year—July in Europe with my best friend of eleven years, September hiking in the Himalayas, my 18th birthday riding camels in Dubai, January saving turtles in the Great Barrier Reef, March in South Africa at a Great White Shark Research Institute—I wonder if my parents would have really let me jet off to someplace else without the reassurance that I would be safe (like at boarding school, where you’re required to check-in every night at some ridiculously early hour.)
Coronavirus has been both a blessing and a punishment. I missed out on what could’ve been the best term in high school. I planned out my gap year down to the very plane tickets I would be buying just to be told I could neither pay for my expenses (because financial aid through gap year programs is much harder to receive in a global pandemic) or even leave to pursue my goals. I never got to hug my friends knowing I would likely never see them again. I spent the last four months of my senior year talking through a computer screen. I watched my graduation ceremony online.
Yet I also found love. I found happiness. I took many days to self-reflect. I learned to live with myself and not feel uncomfortable or worthless or a failure. I truly healed just by being handed the time to.
When I think about these next months, I see endless possibilities. I’ve learned that there’s a silver lining to everything, even a pandemic that shuts down the world at its very core. But I’m hopeful that I will continue my journey of self-growth through being able to sit with myself, even if it may be in my room eating a PB&J, watching Breaking Bad.
