Quarantine has us all on edge

Thursday, March 12, 2020

Today was hectic.

When I got to school this morning, there were already rumors spreading around about the “quarantine” and school getting out early.

Today was also supposed to be my last day of school before spring break. I imagined myself hanging out with friends, going to the movies and the beach, having fun, but with all the talk about the coronavirus, it looked like that wasn’t going to happen.

We did get let out early, which was a surprise to me, though I suspect it was because kids at my school were leaving anyway.

When my mom came to get me, she looked frantic. She immediately bombarded me with hand sanitizer and made me put on a mask, which confused me because she had never been worried about it before. When we got to the store, people ran around like madmen, grabbing five or six packages of toilet paper and paper towels (my mom included). By the end of our trip, I was sure we had bought the most food I had ever bought in my life during that one trip to the supermarket. It was a bonus for me because since my mom acted as though it was the beginning of the apocalypse, she let me buy all my favorite snacks.

When we finally got home and brought what felt like one hundred grocery bags up the stairs, my mom felt the need to teach me how to wash my hands as if I had never done it before. This whole thing was starting to stress me out, but what I didn’t know was that this was going to last for almost five full months.

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Tuesday, July 14, 2020

If you would have asked me five months ago how I would be spending my summer, I assure you it would not be like this. I won’t lie, at first I was pretty excited about this whole quarantine thing. Of course, I looked at it from the perspective of a typical teenager who would do anything to stay home from school. That backfired on me.

Quarantine has taught me a lot about myself. However, I did not know that I am physically incapable of sitting still for over thirty minutes, which presented itself as a dilemma seeing as my classes were all over an hour long. I learned (and everyone should try to remember this) that two Tauruses stuck in a small apartment together for over four months is not an ideal combination. I don’t think I can count on my fingers how often my mother and I have argued over the most ridiculous and futile things. For example, the other day, my mom was mad at me for her room being messy. How does that even make sense? And God help our next-door neighbors because they can probably hear us arguing through our apartment walls and think we are both crazy.

I’m currently typing this in my room, lying across my bed, and listening to H.E.R. on my record player that I got for my birthday.

In all honesty, I’m completely over it, and I wish we could press a fast forward button and skip to December before anything else bad can happen.

The other day I was scrolling through Instagram, and I saw that apparently, a squirrel in Colorado tested positive for the Bubonic Plague. The fact that they found that specific squirrel is beyond me. But all I know is there better not be another pandemic because I think I might lose my mind if there is.

2020, give us a break.

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‍Thursday, July 16, 2020

Have you ever prepared something for months on end, only for it to get canceled? Like, imagine you planned an extravagant beach party, and your favorite music artist was going to perform, and all your friends and family were going to come, and then it starts pouring rain. That’s how I feel right now about my basketball season.

Today my coach emailed us saying that there would be no AAU season. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he hadn’t spent all the months of quarantine assuring us there actually would be a season, despite our doubt, and we needed to be “prepared for the other teams.” So pretty much I just spent all these months training vigorously for a season that isn’t going to happen.

Don’t get me wrong, I love training. But it’s hard to feel motivated when I now know there will be no summer season, and maybe not even a school season this upcoming winter. Training five times a week is hard, knowing that the next time I get to play might not be until next year.

I’m going to continue to train, obviously, but this is just another thing that the coronavirus has ruined for me this year.