Disbelief. That’s all that comes to mind when I think about this mess we’re all in now. Disbelief about the planet being clouded by a pandemic. Disbelief about the hysterics surrounding the virus. Disbelief that any of this is even happening right now. Life right now feels like a bad science fiction movie or like we’re all in this game where someone is trying to find a way to wipe out the world’s population. It takes everything in me to realize the fact that I’m living through a historic event. I’m going to be old walking around hearing about the “COVID-19 pandemic of 2020” being an essay question on an AP test. It’s so surreal. I never thought something like this would happen in my lifetime, and with the way everything is going right now, I don’t think anyone else did either.

TVs blare panic out into the world with statistics and stories large enough to work paranoia in the hearts and homes of everyone. Doctors cry on camera begging for people to just stay home. Patients on ventilators warn not to take this lightly. It’s overpowering and extremely good at sucking the hope out of the room. Seeing the numbers climb upwards of +10% a night for cases in New York, seeing the trauma of those in Italy and China, and seeing people I care about go through the literal stages of grief because of COVID-19 causes a massive struggle in emotions for me. On one side I applaud the actions taken to control the virus, and I understand the importance of following the suggestions of the CDC and the rules the government instills. On the other, I sit here wondering if it’s all necessary and if things could be done differently or done earlier. (continue)
In the end, though, I have to remind myself that I am an outsider in this event. I am one of the lucky ones. I live in Alabama, a state with only a little bit more than 900 cases and 13 deaths. My county only has 50 cases. My town, only 15. With a population of 63 thousand, that’s not even 1% infected. Only nine deaths have happened so far in the local hospital. I am one of the lucky ones because I know I don’t have to worry. My grocery stores are maintaining a good stock of everything. I can find golden items like toilet paper and Lysol. The hospital here is not running out of masks. Auburn is in a holding phase. We’re waiting for the inevitable. Until then, I will sit in my bedroom and feel disconnected from the rest of the world. I will sit here and hear the stories of my college friends scrambling to get their things from campus. I will sit here worrying about them being so close to epicenters in the northeast. And I will sit here staring at the screen of my laptop watching reports on another death and another outbreak and feel like my concerns are misplaced but having to tell myself that if I was somewhere else they would not be.

I am angry. I don’t want to be, but I am. I get angry when something is wrong and I don’t know what to do about it. I want this to be over, and I want things to go back to normal. The frenzy and nervousness that’s polluting the air are suffocating. I can’t go an hour without my stepmom or dad telling me some horribly depressing statistic or one of them voicing the same annoyance about the shutdowns that they bring up daily. Social media is just as bad, the jokes being funny for a while until the reality of it all starts to poke through and the posts aren’t funny anymore. Everything is falling into this hole of despair and I hate it. Every text I get asking me if I’m safe, every email wishing me wellness, it all just makes this situation fly off into uncontainable proportions, and I wish everyone would just stop soaking in this pool of misery we’re making and instead find some positives in this and adapt. This is not permanent. We’ll find a cure or a vaccine and we’ll all go back to work and school and it will be okay. The deaths of all the victims to coronavirus should not force us into submission to the virus, they should inspire us to do what’s right and fight to end it. This pandemic will not go away without us accepting the situation we are in and, even though it may seem futile, we just have to work with what we have going on.

As a college student I (continue)