My Life Right About Now
It’s no secret that life is different right now. All across the country, college students are being faced with the tough reality of having to stay home for the time being. What started as a quick break has quickly turned into something unimaginably longer. For me personally, I came home with so many plans. An awesome Spring Break trip with my friends, college parties and formals, an awesome internship in my favorite city in the world. And slowly but surely it all went away.
As I sat at home, all I could do was watch as every single hope and expectation I’d had for the next few months slowly vanished, like the sandcastles I would make on the beach being swamped by the ocean. All I could do was watch as it crumbled from existence, each day starting to blend together.
For the first couple of weeks it was surprisingly great. Sure, I still had the linger ‘What if?’ in my mind, playing the scenarios of what life would have been like had I not been quarantined. But I was at home. I could eat all the unhealthy snacks I wanted, play as many video games as I could, and wake up at the most ungodly hours without feeling like I was missing anything. But over time, those initial boons began to curse me. Waking up in the afternoons began to hurt me, and I physically felt slower. Those once exciting video games felt so repetitive, like watching the same movie over and over again. I fell into a slump, where everything was different, yet nothing felt different.
The next week was dreary and terrible. I knew I had to do something about it, yet there was nothing I felt like doing. I’m a bit ashamed to say it, but here goes. I started watching TikTok videos almost religiously. Classes had started again by this point, and I think that’s what helped me get out of the slump. It was almost like a reminder of times before. A time where I would constantly be moving. A time where I felt like I had stuff to do. Whatever the case, that was the wakeup call for me.
That same day that classes started was the day that I decided to make a schedule for myself. First of all, I set a workout schedule for myself. I also gave myself a bunch of activities that I’ve wanted to do for a while, including reading several books, and working on my novel and blog. Every morning, I would wake up and finish my classes first. After that I would go workout, take a shower, eat lunch, and then work on whatever activities I wanted to do for the day. While that schedule didn’t always work, on most days this gave me the motivation to get stuff done.
It’s a schedule that I’ve mostly followed since then. And between that, and the ability for me to constantly FaceTime my friends, I can definitely say that those initial feelings of loss and repetitiveness were quickly diminished.
But not permanently.
Let me share a short story of what happened to me a couple days ago.
At this point, I’m nearing the 2 month mark since I first flew back home, and for some reason it really hit me hard. While most of my days had been spent happily facetiming my friends, playing random online games and talking about our plans for the fall, for some reason on this particular day I just felt like being alone. I hadn’t been outside in the fresh air for three weeks straight at this point, so I decided to go out and ride my bike around town. I hopped on, and headed over to my favorite place in my town. Officially called Skull Bay, affectionately called The Marsh by the locals, the outpost was only a 5 minute ride from my house. And sure, when looking at it you wouldn’t really call it special. It was just a raised wooden platform above the water with a couple of benches and a solid path through the marsh back to civilization. But what I loved about the place was how quiet it was. When the rambunctious kids and irrationally loud parents were gone, all you could hear was the wind, the soft splashes of water, and the distant echoes of life. You could see the ocean on one side, and the high rises on the other. It was a place where I could sit quietly, deeply inhale the salty air, and enjoy the simple state of being. The last time I’d been there, around a month prior, I’d sat there for over an hour along with an older couple that quietly talked about the marsh and how it had changed over the last few years. It was such a pleasant time, and I was dying to experience it again.
So with all of these thoughts in mind I feverishly rode my bike over to the marsh. Only to see that high tide had already surrounded the platform, making it inaccessible. I don’t know why, but for some reason I felt seriously disappointed by that. It’s not like I couldn’t go back there ever again, all I had to do was wait until tomorrow and make the short trip over. But I didn’t think about that, all I could do was focus on the short term. My short term expectations, and the short term disappointment that I faced. So I sat down in the sand for a couple of minutes, and stared at the platform bobbing in the water. I felt exactly like that chunk of wood. Trapped, surrounded by water with no possible sign of escape. All of the previous frustrations I had threatened to come back, exactly like the water. Flowing all around me. I thought about all of my experiences in the marsh, the time the cross country team made all of the freshman, myself included, swim across the mucky water to grab a reed, the one time I helped a local fisherman catch a particularly generous haul, that time I came here with my grandma and got my feet stuck in the thick bog. All of those experiences felt like nothing anymore, all traces of it washed away by the dark water of time. All that was left was the tide, surrounding me, making me float like that small wooden platform in the middle of the marsh.
That’s when I thought about it a little bit more. Despite the force of the tide, despite how pervasive it was, filling everything everywhere, eventually it would roll back to where it came from. Eventually, all of the memories, all of the experiences, would come rushing back. Just as quickly as high tide had come, eventually low tide, and with it dawn, would be here. All we could do to survive during the worst was to be like the little wooden platform, floating above it, hanging in there until the sweet relief of low tide.
Yes, life is difficult right now. There have been, and there will continue to be times when the going will get tough. You may feel like you’re surrounded by the high tide many times in the next few months. But it’s important to remember that the dawn is coming. Things will eventually start to become normal again, all you gotta do is hang in there.
Thank you so much for listening to my thoughts! It’s been a very interesting time, and it’s definitely made me think about my life a lot. I hold a far greater appreciation for college, and the abilities I have to spend time with such fun and amazing people.
This is also going to be the first post of hopefully many, so I would like to next nominate Anuraag to share his experiences next!
