The Journey Home

March 29th, 2020

2:09pm — boarded onto the plane.

Barely

anyone.

The plane

In its bare skeleton

So much breathing space for me

In such a breathless

Time.

Barely

anyone.

I wrote this observation/poem/thought on my flight from Taiwan to Shanghai. After two weeks of quarantine in Taipei upon returning from New York, I was about to make another journey — another 2 weeks of quarantine — to finally be with my family. What should the title be?

This journey home was long and lonely, filled with buckets of tears. Prior to confirming my flight to Shanghai, I lay on my bed for hours and days paralyzed by all the uncertainties. When will I see my parents? My boyfriend? My friends? They were just a flight away but I didn’t know if I could go back to them. China’s quarantine and lockdown were only getting stricter and stricter. Life for me then really did feel like imprisonment. Barely breathable.

Now fast forward to the last stop of my journey, on a flight that was meant to carry 300+ passengers at its normal capacity, I was one of the 30 passengers on the plane. As I walked through the plane during boarding, everyone was spread across the plane. I realized that for the first time, I would be having three entire rows to myself. When I sat down, I could no longer see any faces. No couples snuggling together side by side. No curious babies looking around the plane for the first time. No one reaching up to put their handbags into the overhead cabin. In a long-haul flight, this tranquility might have been a paradise. But on that day, I never imagined traveling being so depressing and eerie.

What a time March was.

Now I feel like I live in an alternate reality or some forgotten dream. While life in Taipei and Shanghai are back to pre-COVID times, I wake up every morning reading hopeless updates from US and international media about countries struggling to contain the virus. Every so often, I would be out enjoying Shanghai nightlife and next thing I know, I am given a reality check with bleak emails from bleak emails sent by Barnard and Columbia administrations about fall updates. When the plans were still to allow students back on campus, I spent countless hours debating my fall plans amidst ICE’s new policies on international students even though I knew deep down I was probably not going back in the fall. And now, I have to do remote learning 12 hours ahead of NYC in a city where social distancing and lockdowns are no longer required. Life really does pull tricks like these on you sometimes.

If anything, this pandemic has taught me a couple of lessons and I would love to share it with you guys!

1. Remember that cringy phrase we use to say in middle school? YOLO? Yeah, I’m bringing it back. Life is unpredictable, even in the smallest ways. During my last couple of weeks in New York, I remember thinking “Oh, I’m going to focus on school for these weeks before the midterms and save the celebration for Spring break”. My friends and I planned so many exciting things for that Spring break. It was going to go down in history. But never did I think it was going down in history for being the most stressful escape of our lives. Live in the moment!
2. School is overrated. Don’t get me wrong, I love school. It is a place of gathering inspiration and expertise that will never be replaced. I can’t imagine where else I would meet the most amazing people that I have met if it weren’t for schools. However, I learned so much more this summer from doing internships, online collaborations, personal projects/research, and self-learning than I ever did at school in such a short amount of time. Growing up in a bubble where my community focused on achieving good grades and prestigious college education, I was brainwashed into thinking that I had it all just by graduating with good grades and going to Barnard College. School gave me a lot of factual knowledge, but true skills that I need in life? I’m not so sure… So believe in yourself more and that you are not constrained to your schoolwork! Live outside the box.
3. Every seemingly bad situation has its own silver-linings waiting to be discovered by you. While I was sad to see my first year of college end so swiftly, I was also given the opportunity to spend more time with my family, high school friends, and my long-distance boyfriend. What more? I was able to make new friends at home! Also, having so much more time to myself, I was able to try out things I always wanted to do but never had time to do so. In the grand scheme of things, this pandemic has highlighted the flaws and holes in our world that urgently need attention and actions, from climate change to healthcare issues to systemic racism. Yes, it is sad to see that it took a pandemic to really drill it to our brains that these serious problems still exist, but at least we are moving forward. Your silver-linings will not be the same as mine, but I bet there are some out there waiting for you to discover (if you haven’t already).

What a time this Summer was.

Here I thought I would be going back to NYC for my sophomore year, but I am excited to see what I learn from this semester abroad at home!