Even after all the time that has passed since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, I still feel as though I am trapped in the lockdowns that upended many people’s lives — including my own.
From the first reported cases of COVID-19 in China, I had been following the story being reported on by several branches of world news and by the World Health Organization.
It was the biggest story that was going through my head and it was all I could talk about from the end of December to the beginning of January. Everyone around me had said that it would be another SARS scare that would go nowhere in the United States.
Then, the first cases were reported in the U.S. and the story continued on from there as the pandemic slowly spread to Boston, with its first case being reported Feb 1.
With the first case came the first wave of people getting infected with COVID-19. As the number of infections increased, the lockdowns began.
Former Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker declared a state of emergency, ordering schools to go remote and businesses to close down.
The lockdown was during my last year of high school and the remainder of my year was spent doing school online. COVID-19 had ruined who I was hoping to be and had ruined the goals that I had made at the time.
I had always been a quiet person and wanted to step out of my shell during my senior year. I had set a goal to start getting more involved with the people around me and start looking into my passion for the news.
This sudden shift in environments and the dread I was feeling from reading all of the ongoing news of people around the world dying and people getting sick, it pushed me back into my shell, leaving me scared to come out.
The lockdowns kept me trapped as a box on a screen with my name sprawled across it as school continued to happen online.
Online school brought us face-to-face with many problems that in-school classes didn’t have. Several students had no access to the internet or access to a computer that could allow them to do their work while in lockdown. Teachers had to learn how to teach their courses on Zoom, which was difficult for both them and students to use.
For my family, the internet had the best connection in the living room, so my three siblings and I sat having to hear a cacophony of voices from everyone’s computers filling the small space.
For some people, online school helped them, as they felt like they were in an environment that was comfortable for them and they were able to multitask while paying attention to their classes.
That was not the case for me or for several other students I had known at the time who had the same desire to be back in person again. Online school caused me more stress and loneliness: my mental health was swaying on the verge of collapse.
The only hope I had was that eventually I would go to college and the pandemic would be over by then.
Then came graduation, and my high school had announced that there was going to be no in-person celebration. Instead, we did a drive-thru in the school’s parking lot where you would wear a mask and walk out of the car, grab your diploma, shake the headmaster’s hand and leave.
This makeshift graduation gave me no sense of accomplishment or the sense that all the hard work I put in throughout the last four years was worth it.
College started and the same story continued on. It felt like I had never left high school and staring at a computer every day with some classes being early in the morning and other classes being later at night could not have been worse for me.
It felt like there was no hope until we came back in person and the lockdowns had been lifted.
Yet, something wasn’t right anymore.
We were no longer the same; my social skills and everyone else around me felt like they were in their own little bubble trying to not get COVID-19. It felt like none of us knew how to interact with anyone anymore.
College didn’t feel like what college was supposed to be like. I was still stuck in high school and nothing had changed.
To this day, even after we approach 2024 the lockdowns that we faced in 2020 were not over, there was still the looming threat of COVID-19 and the dreadful feeling of not accomplishing the goals I had set for myself.
