The last thing I can remember from what was supposed to be “a new and fresh year” was being extremely naive.
I had hit the halfway point of the spring semester and things were looking up. Midterms were easy and all I had to worry about was what amazing adventures I planned to go on over the upcoming break.
What was the cheapest flight I could get out of the country? Which friends did I want to see over my week of freedom? For me, coronavirus was this almost impossibly small and nonexistent being in my everyday life.
I mean, what could a virus in a country across the ocean do to me?
And then I woke up.
When I say I woke up, I mean it literally.
Just like any normal day in my home the news was on and I was stumbling out of my half-made bed to make a glass of English breakfast tea. I didn’t wake up that morning expecting to find the case count climbing and my university closed. In-fact, I woke up that morning expecting to go out and enjoy the weather by spending time outside.
I realized that coronavirus was real, it was growing, and I didn’t feel like there was much I could do to stop it.
Things started to spiral so incredibly fast that it was like I was driving a car with broken brakes. Within the week I was no longer naive to this life that I thought was so far away it could never be my own reality.
This whole situation started out in what I now see as a numb fear. Deep down I knew that I was scared, but it was almost as if the world was continuing to go on as normal. People were buying out grocery store aisles… but why was everyone still going about normal life? Did that person that just coughed near me in the store have the virus? Am I really safe?
Like many, the first few weeks of COVID-19 in the United States led me on a spiral of news articles and scientific journals. I didn’t know if I should trust people when they said it is just like the flu. Could this virus actually kill me?
It didn’t take me long to find out that yes, this virus really could kill me.
When I read articles about those who died from the virus because they were “high risk,” I didn’t expect myself to fall in that same category.
I am asthmatic and have had lung issues since elementary school. I am no stranger to the feeling of tight lungs and the inability to breathe. My cupboards are stocked with liquid medicine meant to be vaporized to open my airways when breathing becomes hard.
So I spent the first few days after this revelation scared to go outside. Being someone who is “unhealthy” during this all puts life into a new perspective, and getting over that fear was harder than attending college online or being locked at home.
Yet as time has continued on, I have started to adjust to this new way of life and the fear that I once had has started to dissipate. Reporting has become phone calls and Skype calls to talk to sources. Exercise has become neighborhood walks and virtual yoga classes attended in my front room. Attending school is its own adventure of Zoom call lectures and email submitted homework.
Most of all I have realized the true importance of distancing and hygiene. What used to be a simple run to the grocery store now requires a blue sterile mask. Hand sanitizer before leaving the car and again once I return.
Through the time that I have had to spend cooped up in the splatter painted walls of my room, I have been able to look and reflect on the good things in life. I am thankful to still be healthy, and to have access to my courses and reporting staff via the internet.
I have learned to start appreciating the people, places, and pastimes that used to be “the norm” in my “old life.” Small things like sitting in a coffee shop working on an article, or venturing through a Walmart at midnight with friends will become cherished moments once this quarantine is over.
I don’t know when this pandemic will end, or when I will be able to attend a “late night homework sesh” with my friends again without it being through computer screens, but I know that it will happen.
We will get through this. It will just take some time, and a little space.
Contact the reporter at haobrien@asu.edu.
