All around the world everyone has dealt with COVID-19, some in painful ways, some in sad ways, or some that are just careless. For me personally, this pandemic has affected me in a good way and in a bad way, the only good thing that came out of this was I didn’t have to finish my senior year and just graduated without doing my classwork so that was the only easy part. A lot of negative things have come out of this pandemic, though. Like not being able to experience your one time highschool graduation, not being able to get your driver’s license on time because everywhere is closed down, or not being able to find a job but luckily for me, I found a job a month or two after I graduated. My dad lost his job because of COVID-19 and he has desperately been trying to find a new one in case his job never opens back up, because he feels as if he needs a job to support his family even when he’s getting to an old age. Sometimes I feel bad about him losing his job because it has put us in such stressful situations money wise. Most times it’s a struggle to pay bills with him losing his job, so i’m glad I got one so I could help them out a bit. But the only good thing about it is that he gets to relax. I’ve seen him struggling with work since I was a little girl and I remember hearing him complain about his knee and his back hurting from working so much. He seems a lot happier now and he also seems stressed
out. The most difficult part of this pandemic is hearing about how fast it’s growing and how many cases rise in my city everyday because people choose not to be careful. It’s a scary situation because i’ve seen so many people on social media post about their loved ones passing away and how they’re trying to raise money for hospital bills and for their memorials. Sometimes I feel like it’s a traumatizing thing to go through and that I know none of this should’ve happened but sadly it isn’t in my control or anyone else’s. Seeing how careless some people are throwing parties and doing huge gatherings really makes me angry because if they just stopped we
would’ve gotten out of this mess so much faster and easier and there would be way less deaths, mourns, and cases. I try to do my best to support the people that have lost their family members or friends by this traumatic virus by donating, sharing their links, and reaching out to them. I think it’s the least any of us can do and it makes me so grateful that me or anyone I know hasn’t been affected by it (yet). I’ve experienced multiple events that have been canceled because of COVID. Events like my siblings birthdays, my own birthday, graduation, hanging out with my boyfriend or my friend. I won’t ever get to experience my high school graduation or my last semester of senior year and that’s what made me the most sad. I think we took physically going to school for granted because I’d honestly do anything to have it back, doing school online makes things so much more confusing and harder and I know everyone else can agree. But looking back I know how dangerous it is for us to get everything opened up and back to normal so obviously it’s a good thing we’re doing online, and like I mentioned above, I’m really thankful me or my family haven’t been affected by it because if I experienced any losses in my family because of the pandemic I wouldn’t have the motivation to do school or go to work so I think it’s important to look back at your blessings. So I think it’s safe to say quarantine has been a good thing and a curse. I haven’t really seen any acts of kindness in my neighborhood because I think for the first couple of months no one wanted to be around anyone for safety. Except at grocery stores, people were wild there and they ran out of almost everything every night but the funny
thing is stores were insanely crowded until they started letting a bit of people in a building at a time. Sometimes being in quarantine makes me sad for the people that depended on school to escape from abusive families or the ones that depended on school food to feed themselves, that’s why I always try to give as much as I can, I think as humans we have to care for one another and give to the less fortunate in times like these. My heart is with the people that have experienced losses in their family, loss of jobs, the ones that have experienced more abuse by being at home 24/7, and the ones just mentally drained of seeing bad news everywhere. I hope by mid 2021 things turn back to normal and it’s more safe to go outside and experience the world again.
Submitted by Safaa Othman, San Diego County – El Cajon.