“There’s a whole other year ahead of you and years after that, and you have your wonderful self, the one who made it through the year COVID struck the world.”

“As sad as it sounds, I went outside and played with trees. I was a big football kid. But what’s football without people to throw the ball to? So I used to throw the ball at trees, anything just to keep my mind off of the fact that I was alone.”

“This is my story. It’s called the year of worry.”

“I’m so sorry your senior year is ruined. Bummer. Your last year in high school is online. It must suck to not be able to see anyone.”

“Everyone else was watching the sunset from some other world adjacent to the one I occupied where they couldn’t see me. I didn’t want a sunset, but the sky was putting on a show.”

“I was jolted awake by my phone’s alarm clock—set to 10 minutes before class began, to maximize sleeping time. With a wonderful dream cut short by the misgivings of online school, I lay in bed with my eyes awake but still closed, desperate for just another wink of sleep.”

“I got way bored, and then my friends wouldn’t answer their phone. Then I had to play all by myself. So I just drew and watched protests on TikTok.”

“Here’s what time stopping meant. I stopped playing basketball. I stopped seeing my friends and sitting by them at lunch. I stopped sharing meals with my grandparents. I stopped going to the park. I stopped performing musical theater. I stopped being sure if we’d ever go back to school. I stopped caring about my appearance. I stopped feeling frantic.”

“I realized that this is not going to be over soon. I’m not going to see my friends, my family, nothing. And when I realized it, I was heartbroken.”

“I wasn’t Ferris Bueller running around skipping class. I was in my bed, doing my work, telling myself to wait one more minute before joining the next Zoom class. It didn’t make sense, any of it.”

“The pandemic helped me to be more independent. I learned to do things more by myself. I made my own schedule, made my own lunch, made time to do homework, made time to have breaks, etc. Before I always had to ask my parents what was happening that day, but I learned how to ask myself for help.”

“I was doing alright until online school came. I mean, how bad could it be being in your house, being in your room staring at a computer? I was wrong.”

“I woke up at around one in the morning to my parents worried voices. I couldn’t tell what they were saying, I walked into their room and asked what they were saying. ‘We will explain it in the morning’, my mom said to me. I went to bed that night with a sore stomach, sweaty palms, and worried thoughts.”

“As a biracial brown person, I knew about the injustices and police brutality towards minorities. But I never thought that anything like this would happen in Minneapolis.”

“It felt like the world was shutting down. Because of coronavirus, my birthday was my last day in person at my elementary school. Everything changed.”

“When we came back to school, we had to wear a mask. If we wanted to play a game or something like that it was hard because we would be out of breath.”

“I developed my own opinion instead of just doing whatever anyone else was doing. I researched stuff before I actually wanted to say something about it.”

“My seventh birthday was during the pandemic. I did not have a normal birthday because of COVID. Instead, I had a mini birthday in my backyard.”

“The friendships I had that weren’t true, I lost, but the ones that were genuine grew stronger than ever before.”

“I never would have thought that my first division from others would be my skin color. I woke up to the news playing downstairs. I ran to see what was going on, to be met by a familiar name on the screen. George Floyd was pronounced dead by police brutality on May 25 2020.”

“The last year for me and for many people was a difficult one, not just because of the pandemic, but because of the protests that followed the death of George Floyd. It really brought an awareness to police brutality here in the United States for many people who were unaware of the abuses that were taking place for many, many years.”

“I found an obsession during this time, something to take my mind off of all the boredom around me. And I got obsessed with music. I relaxed in the strange yet suddenly common state of solitude that the world offered me.”

“The pandemic helped me be creative with my art. I started just doing digital art and started to paint again too.”

“The last couple of days we were in school, it was like there was no one there.”

“When I got to my new school, I wasn’t able to see half my classmates because the school was split up. And guess whose fault it was? Yep. COVID.”

“I realized I’d compartmentalized everything. I thought only in logical terms — this is the way things are, this is what I have to do. I had to keep moving, keep working. I couldn’t control what was going on in the world, but I could keep control over my life. I never processed what I lost.”

“Until quarantine, I never looked inwards and saw the hole in my heart.”

“Through it all, the struggles and mental health dips, the breakdowns in the seemingly endless, endless zoom classes…There was always a story to tell and a story to read. The stories were no longer an optional escape from the sci-fi reality we called the pandemic.”

 

“Having to wear a doctor’s mask in a store. It’s not that bad. Not as bad as having lives at stake.”

“In a city that was once known as the city that never sleeps, it is almost as if the city has now fallen to rest.”