Aspen Rush
Contributing Writter
If you had asked me a year ago to predict what I would be doing right now, I would have guessed studying abroad, working at the Voice, writing my junior I.S. and going to dance parties. I never would have guessed I would be taking a gap semester, living in my hometown and working two jobs. I swore to myself I would never end up back here. It feels like I fell asleep in February and woke up in an alternate reality. Somewhere in between those months, I’d lost the person I hoped I would be. The person I am now seems a far cry from the successful college student I was in January.
This isn’t another article to tell you about how you should be taking this time to better yourself or to find happiness in the small things. I beg of you, please stop trying to tell me to find the bright side in a pandemic. This is a time of loss. Some of us have lost people, lost graduation, lost closure, lost jobs — and the list goes on infinitely. At the very least, we all have lost time. The months taken away feel like years; a pre-pandemic world feels like a dream. I’m beginning to forget what it feels like to dance with my friends, or to hug my grandparents.
In March and April, I scrolled through Instagram to find people picking up quarantine hobbies like knitting or embroidery or chicken raising. I tried to do that. I have a quarter-inch scarf I will never finish knitting sitting in my closet. To everyone who picked up hobbies during this pandemic, I admire you. I was too caught up in my own emotions that all I could stomach was a couple episodes of “Too Hot to Handle.”
Now that the initial shock of the pandemic has faded, it seems that most people have continued on with their lives, only minorly inconvenienced by masks. While some students have returned to campus or found comfort in their hometown friends, I feel I have lost my community. However, I know I am not alone in feeling the intense loneliness of distance.
While I will not tell you to find a silver lining in a pandemic and I can’t even say that better times are coming (thanks, global warming), I will tell you to open yourself to all of the ugly emotions. Mourn your canceled study abroad or your graduation. Allow yourself to mourn the things you have lost, no matter how small. You don’t have to juxtapose your loss with everyone else’s. Mourn every single thing the pandemic has taken from you. As we grieve, be gentle with yourself and be gentle with everyone around you.