Dear beloved readers,
What a scary time to be alive. In just one week I feel like the world took a wrong turn and I have to be honest, I am terrified. Over the last 48 hours really, things got really scary and now I have that weird feeling I guess everyone shares with me, that I don’t know if I am underreacting or overreacting, but it is alarming and I really don’t know what to tell you guys other than please take care of yourselves and wash your hands.
I feel like I wasn’t scared at all until Wednesday. My boyfriend and I have been joking back and forth, saying it wasn’t such a big deal, and as someone who works with journalism, I thought there was a lot of misinformation and a lot of exaggeration going on the media, but it wasn’t until I went to a local grocery store and found basically empty shelves and then had my college cancelling classes for the week that I realized that maybe this is the pandemic crisis I never thought I would be experiencing. I mean, come on, Tom Hanks? Miss Corona better chill and leave my hero alone!
In all seriousness, it sucks. It sucks mostly, and I don’t want by any means sound bratty or ungrateful, as I still have my health, but I did have some really exciting and important plans for this year and as this gets progressively worse, I don’t know where those will end up, how everything will turn out. For now I am trying to remain positive, but I am also not gonna say “fuck this, I am young, I will survive”, because I have empathy enough to know that it’s not only my life that matters, but anyhow, still very frustrating to have to cancel things you were looking forward to. So FYI, I’ve been staying out of twitter because I feel like people are constantly fighting over the importance of this, and I just wanna say, you are entitled to be upset if this awful thing got in the way of your plans, okay?
I am currently back at my parent’s house, thought it would be a good call as we are all basically quarantined and avoiding going out as much as possible, at least here my mom can cook and I don’t want to be alone 24/7, because trust me when I say that living alone has it’s cons. One thing I am gathering from this experience is how life is unpredictable. Like seriously, I know I’ve written probably a thousand posts here about change and how tricky it is to deal with something as inconstant as the changes the universe present to us every other day, and I thought I was getting better at dealing with them until being faced with something that literally is not up to me whatsoever.
It’s hard for me because I do have OCD and I cannot even begin to explain how frustrated my brain feels when I am obsessing over something I have no control over, honestly feel sorry for everyone I talk to on a daily because it’s nearly unbearable for me not to be constantly thinking about this damn virus. And as annoying as it is, I am trying to get something from this experience, understand a little more about this whole thing and see how this truly can impact me in a positive way, because sometimes, it doesn’t matter how much you plan your life, there are things that are not up to you and you will just have to roll with it.
For now, let’s please focus on our health and try to stay hydrated and avoid social gatherings as much as possible – for an old lady like me, that one will be a piece of cake. Use this time quarantined to binge watch a show, watch every movie that was on your list, reread your favorite book and even learn how to bake! This is not the kind of thing we can just shrug off and go on with our lives as if nothing is happening, we need to be precautious because even if this won’t likely kill us, we can hurt people by neglecting the situation, so please let’s stay focused on doing what is best as a group not as individuals here.
If anything, can we please agree to never again vote on people who don’t care about public health, like, ever?!?! I obviously never sided with people who claimed shit like that because I have more than one working braincell and I know that health shouldn’t be a privilege but a right. May this be a reminder than health is not a private thing, as living beings we live in groups, we are in constant contact with a whole lot of other people, everyone’s health depends on everyone’s health to a certain extant, specially in times of pandemic crisis such as this. Public health care must be public as health is public. Periodt.
What else? Well, I will be enjoying my quarantine with facetimes with my boyfriend and friends, binge watching How I Met Your Mother, doing some research for my thesis and reading a lot about that too, and above everything, I will try not to freak myself out thinking about how this coronavirus can affect me. Another thing I wanted to mention, obviously there has been a lot of memes regarding this and if this is your copy mechanism as I know it is mine, please go for it, use humor if you have to, let’s just keep our jokes respectful and hopefully we will be able to face this together, with flying colors.
For now, I don’t want to focus on what I could be doing instead of being confined at my house, I want us all to cooperate so we can get out of this as soon as possible and deal with this in the right way. I am counting on all of you to be wiser than to book that damn trip to Dubai for 8$ and to stay safely at your home. This may not be a big, deadly deal for you who is young and at your prime but you can still carry the virus and hurt someone older in the process, and as much as I think this is a big “fuck you” in the face of all those old people who choose racists presidents over public health, I obviously don’t want no one to die. So let’s just be conscious and do our part so we can get better soon and not have to be on lockdown, or quarantined, or in an emergency state okay? I don’t know about you all but that sounds hella scary to me, and I just want this madness to be over ASAP.
I never in a million years thought we would be dealing with such a worldwide crisis, this global pandemic is really freaky and I am not gonna pretend I am not scared of it. I will be doing my part and staying as chill as possible, and since I know for a fact I won’t be leaving the house, for the first time ever I can promise I won’t be getting into any trouble. Please follow my lead and stay out of trouble as well, but if you don’t, for the love of God use hand-sanitizer, and tell me all about it.
– Your Girl on the Go