79 Look Who’s Inside Again

Anonymous

When COVID started, I was living in London, Ontario, and had just turned fourteen. I was in my second semester of grade nine. At first, in March 2020, we were told we were getting a couple extra weeks of March break (although everyone knew about the rising cases in Ontario). Of course, this “couple extra weeks” turned into the rest of the school year, with everyone stuck at home. I originally felt relief at not having to socialize or go to school, as I struggle with social anxiety, but as the months went on it got more and more frustrating. Restrictions began to ease up in the summer of 2020, but we continued to go in and out of lockdowns and online schooling throughout grade 10 and 11 for me.

My mom worked in parks and recreation at the time and was laid off, and my dad only worked a few days a week instead of every day. At first, we didn’t even have online school because my school was still trying to figure out how to set up online classes for 1600 students; we just played video games and such all day. Once they figured it out, we had to buy or borrow two extra laptops so my siblings and I could all go to online school at the same time every day, which wasn’t ideal given my mom just lost her job. The only times my siblings and I left the house in those early months was to go on walks.

A very unique and unfortunate experience that COVID brought on happened when my great grandma died. It was in April 2020, at the very start of the strictest lockdowns. We didn’t go to her burial or have a funeral because of the heavy restrictions on burial attendants and public gatherings. We actually ended up never having one because lockdowns dragged on so long. It was really weird because this was my first experience with a family death and it didn’t even feel “real,” if that makes sense. We eventually went to the cemetery and saw her grave, but that was the most interaction we had with her death.

My high school experience felt like a huge letdown, as things only started to become semi-normal in grade twelve. I rarely saw my friends or made new ones; we didn’t have any school activities. Our school schedules were odd and changed constantly, and we were in and out of online school the whole time. At one point, our school was split into “cohorts” and depending on your cohort you could only go to school 2 or 3 days out of the week, doing only one subject all day. That meant my siblings going to school on different days than me, being stuck in one classroom all day, not being allowed to go to the bathroom outside of a designated time and generally feeling miserable. At one point they even shortened our school day, so they didn’t have to give us a lunch break anymore. Virtual schooling for me was actually much better than this extremely regulated in-person situation; not because the education was better, (it wasn’t) but because school was an anxiety-provoking and depressing environment. I soon grew consistently less and less comfortable outside of my own house.

This ties into my next major hurdle that COVID threw at me, the worsening of my social and general anxiety disorders. I have always struggled with anxiety, but once COVID hit and I began to be stuck at home, adapting to “normal” life became extremely difficult. Only being around my family, never seeing anyone face-to-face, and never having to go out in public felt like a relief at first. But this changed very quickly when restrictions started easing up and navigating social situations became unbearable. At one point, in grade 11, I felt so sick at the thought of being in public all day that I would miss school, skip hanging out with my friends, and generally isolate myself. I kind of had to re-learn how to cope with my anxiety, and it felt so much stronger than it was before after years of being by myself.  

Both in and out of high school, I felt I missed out on certain aspects of teenage life compared to my younger siblings. My brother started grade 9 when I was in grade 12, when lockdowns were finally 100% over, and my sister started grade 9 this year. They seem to have much richer school lives than I ever did in high school, they have dances, trips, extra-curricular activities, and are free to socialize in-person. My brother also had a very easy time getting his drivers licenses, while I had to deal with very long and tedious processes due to COVID restrictions (at one point you had to wait 6 months or more for a test), leading to me not getting my G2 until 18, while he got his at 16. I similarly did not get a job in high school, despite wanting one, and not having previous job experience has proved difficult as an adult. Getting a job was extremely difficult for anyone during COVID and being so young I was hardly a contender. But with restrictions long over now, I still have struggled due to my lack of experience. My siblings and their peers do not seem to have such difficulties.

There are many links that my personal experience with COVID has to the themes discussed in class, including the idea of shifting blame onto others. I remember attacks against Chinese Canadians on the news, people blaming politicians for the lockdowns and even people blaming schools for their children not getting proper education. I think we definitely, as humans, have a socially instilled instinct to blame others for something going wrong. When my whole family eventually did get COVID (in 2022, long after most restrictions were lifted) I remember everyone hypothesizing who we got it from (they suspected my cousin who was sniffly when we were last together). The constant need for answers and for someone to be the scapegoat is a consistent theme throughout human history, even leading to extremely serious measures like exile and deportation. COVID’s story is no exception.

Overall, my experience with COVID was long, complex, and frustrating. Even 1200 words is not enough to summarize everything that happened. In the future, historians are going to no doubt have a lot of content to work with when piecing together COVID experiences, because every person, region, and age group had such unique challenges. COVID happened at a pivotal point of growth for me, and has no doubt shaped who I am today.