92 Navigating the COVID-19 Waves as a Newcomer
Anonymous
When COVID started, I had just moved to Canada with my mom. I was 16 years old, in Grade 11, and living in Brampton. I remember my biology teacher saying it would probably be over soon. At first, I was kind of excited. It felt like a surprise break from school, and I thought I would finally get to rest. That feeling didn’t last. The lockdown dragged on. Schools shut down, public places closed, and my world became very small, very fast.
Moving to a new country had already made me feel disconnected, and now I had no way to meet people or make friends. I left behind everyone I knew in India. My friends, my relatives, my dog. At first, having my mom at home all the time felt nice. But slowly, I started to feel trapped. I started blaming my parents for bringing me here. I was used to being around people. I liked going out, talking, and being social. And now I was completely alone. I hated how things were and I hated how I felt. I started putting all my energy into school. It was the one thing I felt like I had control over. I didn’t always hate studying alone. I did that back in India, too. But this time felt different because here, in Canada, my teachers started saying I only did well because of the pandemic. They said things like, “You wouldn’t have gotten these marks if it weren’t for COVID.” It felt like they didn’t want to believe I was actually trying. It made me feel invisible and I stopped talking about school wins because it just made people dismiss me more. At the same time, my family in India was getting sick. I hadn’t seen them in six years. I still haven’t been back. That mix of distance and helplessness was really unravelling my mental health. I couldn’t be there for them. I couldn’t be here for myself. And I didn’t feel like I belonged anywhere.
During this time, I started forgetting things. At first, I didn’t notice it, but later I realized I had started blocking out memories. I now know that was a way my brain was trying to protect me. I was depressed, but I didn’t have a word for it back then. My relationship with my mom got worse. She was also stressed and overwhelmed, and I think we just kept bumping into each other emotionally. When my dad came to Canada later, it helped shift the pressure a little. My mom became a bit lighter. But I was instead stuck in my own head with no one to talk to. I just kept pushing through school, even though I felt like my brain had shut down. Since then, I have read about neuroplasticity and how the brain changes when it goes through stress. I think that my brain was not remembering because it physically could not due to the faulty neural connections. It was stuck through survival mode. Eventually, something shifted. My dog finally arrived from India, and it changed everything. I started taking long walks. The air felt clearer. There were more birds than I remembered. Nature became my way of feeling grounded again. I started drawing more, drinking chai slowly in the mornings. I found small ways to come back to myself.
One of the strongest things I remember from that time is the stigma. I saw how badly Asian people were treated during the early days of the pandemic. People blamed China and made jokes about bats and dirty food. In public, I saw people step away from anyone who looked Asian even if they were being careful and wearing masks. A friend of mine once fake-coughed in a food court when people started staring at her. They backed off immediately. We laughed about it, because we got to skip the line, but deep down I knew it was sad. That moment stuck with me. It showed how powerful stigma can be in impacting how we treat each other, even in dire times. Stigma is not just about race. It also came up in school, when people judged others for taking COVID seriously or for falling behind. There was a general attitude that if you were really struggling, it was somehow your fault. The mental health challenges were normalized in society. Stigma is not a new concept, but has been present for every disease from the past and present. However, while we recognise the patterns, I don’t understand how we fail to correct and learn from our mistakes.
Even now, I still feel the effects of that time. I overthink social situations. I second-guess myself a lot. My social battery is lower than it used to be. But I also learned something important. I saw how people are treated when they’re blamed for something they didn’t cause. I saw how stigma spreads and how hard it is to fight it. And I learned how important it is to hold on to small joys, especially when everything else feels out of control.
COVID didn’t just change the world outside, it also changed how I think, feel, and connect with others. And I am still figuring out how to live with that.