18 Coronavirus and Confusion: a Void within My Life

Anonymous

When the coronavirus pandemic started making national headlines, I was leaving for the Cayman Islands with my family. Five days after my family returned to Canada, we entered our first lockdown. I was in my second semester of grade nine. I was 14.

In March 2020, we entered full lockdown, believing it would last two weeks. It was from March to June. I believed that I had a few weeks off from school. I caught up on some work and took personal time off. My parents stopped working and had to figure out how they were going to manage the virus within their jobs. At the beginning of the initial lockdown, there was little panic within my household. We knew that we would be safe if we followed the rules and expected life would be back to normal soon.

I think what I struggled with was taking on the stress of my family. At the time, I didn’t know that I’m an emotionally sensitive person and that I feel other people’s stress. My parents were extremely stressed about their jobs and how they were going to navigate the situation. My father is an orthodontist and my mother runs the business while also working at a local toy store. My father was at high risk for coming into contact with the virus as he works with mouth germs every day, which was difficult to navigate. I’m sure that many people had similar concerns. Where was the income going to come from? How are we going to pay the staff if we have no income? My parents are the most stressed people I know, so adding a global pandemic on top of it was extremely difficult. There was a new fire for them to put out each day, and they had to implement new protocols overnight.

Additionally, my older sister was struggling with anorexia. There were times when I didn’t know if she was going to be okay. The isolation exacerbated her eating disorder, and she was angry all the time. She was also going to be starting university soon and was unsure what the transition was going to look like. I didn’t know if she was going to hurt herself. My parents were busy with the office and my sister so I had to look after my little brother. I was often the only one of my siblings who could look after us when my parents were dealing with the business, trying to make adjustments so they could bring in patients safely. I was left at home with my siblings, and I had to constantly monitor my sister. My brother was 12 at the time and I don’t know if he was aware to the same extent I was. We were constantly living in the discomfort of the unknown. I looked to my parents for guidance and they weren’t able to offer anything. I don’t remember if I showed signs of mental illness at that point, but when I think about it now, I still get stressed.

I worked as a Covid screener at my father’s office, where I managed patient flow and took temperatures. I screened patients and recorded their responses for records. A lot of the time, I hardly remember what I did with myself each day. Every morning, I woke up with no purpose and the months blended together. I completely lost my sense of time, and my life became a dark void. I do not remember much. I did not start reading, I was not on social media very much, I was not watching TV shows, I didn’t like leaving the house to go for walks, and I didn’t participate in any Covid trends. I was a different version of myself, with no personality or drive to find something to do.

Online schooling was strange, but I think I adapted quickly. I know my English teacher said Zoom calls were like taking into a dark well or void. All my classmates had their cameras and microphones turned off. We were detached from our education and we were taught from a distance. I reached a point where I simply didn’t care about school. I lost any inkling of motivation to work, and I became a husk of myself. I was not able to internalize or assimilate any of the information given to me, or I just didn’t care enough to put in the effort. Coming back to a normal school routines was tricky for me as I had no study habits and didn’t retain any foundational information from starting high school. I was thrown back into education with no clue what I was doing. It was disorienting.

I know that the pandemic was detrimental to a lot of people’s mental health. I don’t remember having mental health problems during the lockdown. I would say that most of my problems arose after. My sister had an extremely difficult time, and seeing her the way she was at the time was unsettling for me. She was angry, and I was scared of her and for her. I think as a collective population, Covid-19 made people chronically anxious, among other problems. There was so much going on all that time, and I felt like I could never keep up. The pandemic, politics, social media, climate change, and online education. I think the constant confusion and stress caused people to be more susceptible to mental illness. Coming out of the pandemic, and many years later, I can see that those feelings are still present. A lot of my friends developed various mental and physical health issues that still linger to this day.

My experience with the pandemic aligns with themes of blame but more-so in the sense that I didn’t know where to put it. Of course, when looking through the news, I saw blame being placed on China. I remember thinking that it wasn’t fair to blame one country, but were these claims right? I was already so confused with what was happening, and I often wasn’t able to differentiate between what was real and fake. I know that I was angry with some of my friends who ignored restrictions and believed the pandemic was either not a problem or fake altogether. I am no longer friends with those people. I was mad at my family members who live in the United States as they had fewer restrictions. I blamed them for being so ignorant and wondered how they could possibly think that traveling to see their friends was a good idea. I know they are not stupid people, but I questioned them. I also blame myself. A few days before the lockdown, I was talking to my friends at school about the situation, and I remember saying that I didn’t think it was a big deal and was confused as to why they had to close the schools. I was naive, and I believed that it was similar to the common cold. I am still mad at myself for saying that because what if other people heard me say that and believed me? Was I responsible for them going out, ignoring the rules and continuing the spread of the virus?