The past three weeks have carried the same emotional weight that a whole year does, maybe even two. I went from running on the beach in Provincetown with my best friends, feeling the extent of my youth as a twenty-one-year-old, to hurriedly packing my things and leaving Boston indefinitely. At the beginning of March, I couldn’t even fathom any of this happening, as none of it was even on my radar. And maybe that’s just the naivete that comes with being a college senior and thinking the world is mine to thrive in, but how could anyone expect the state of the world being what it is today?
For someone with anxiety, this has been the worst-case scenario: with no real guidance on how to know if I even have the virus, with the routine I’ve set in place all my college career gone, and no idea on when I would see my best friends or even my parents. For most of the first week after spring break, I couldn’t sleep and cried a lot, filled with this idea that my life was put on pause during a time where I was excited for it to go even faster. I couldn’t even find a level of calm that I could write on or do even the smallest expression of my emotions. My anxiety was the worst it had ever been and I didn’t know what to do.
Then, as English major cliche as this sounds, I rediscovered reading: the one thing that has always soothed me, even before I could process that I had anxiety. When something would bother me in my preteen/teen years, I would pick up a book and binge read: diving into another world and realizing the solutions I could apply to mine. So, I continued a book that I hadn’t gotten to because of school work, read a hefty amount of chapters in a night, and began to open up to myself again.
From there, I wrote simple things like “I have been so frustrated” or “this is what is upsetting me.” And then I began to meditate (thanks to the sweet BU deal with Headspace). And I empathized with myself, I told her it was okay to feel afraid or sad or upset or even alone because that’s life! Those are emotions you feel because of life! Feeling things during this deeply confusing period of our lives is what we should be doing. While we are taking care of others in our community by social distancing and donating to present causes, we need to take care of ourselves by being honest and open.
I know that I will still continue to process the things that I feel throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. But now I’m certain that I can get through it with a good book, my journal, and a pen.
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