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I can’t sleep. The humidity thickens the air, but the storm is long gone. My house is dark without power; only a few candles are lit here or there. The moonbeams drift in, shallow and blue, but the moon is so large it fills the window panes. These days, I am waiting for confirmation that I’m walking the right path.
Life has a funny way of teaching you a lesson sometimes.
There’s no denying that this has been an incredibly strange summer. For me it began with frantic plane rides, a hotel quarantine and a country-wide lockdown. Everything I thought I valued and considered important was put into question. As the world battles the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, this summer has turned into an extended period of self-reflection. I understand how incredibly privileged I am to have typed that last sentence. Essential workers and healthcare workers are working tirelessly day in and day out to keep us safe and minimize the damage of this horrible virus. Yet I have the ability to wear a mask and spend time with my family and close friends.
I really think I have lost the ability to write. I write a few lines, then erase them. I repeat the process until the page is finally blank and I have no more starters, no more words. I really think somehow I have lost the ability to create. I do not know if this is a normal feeling to have or if this is some sort of side effect of the pandemic, but I know I have it. So I have decided that, instead of worrying about the exact order of words or which ones would make my writing “prettier,” I will just write.
I’ve been thinking about alternative timelines a lot lately. When you’re at the start of something, you imagine a thousand possibilities. When you’re at the end, you imagine a thousand other ways it could have gone.
On Wednesday, March 11, we sat together in our Gatehouse office for the last time.
In my college essay, I had proudly proclaimed that I was not afraid of uncertainty, that I was not scared of complexity, that shades of gray only inspired me. I have to confess that it does not hold true today after three years of college. Perhaps it was never true. But I had never quite experienced this particular shade of gray that now makes me so queasy about the world we live in. I’m not queasy because I think that shade of gray is wrong, but I’m queasy because it is so universal and so complicated that there is no way to characterize it.
In two hours, I’m going to be logging in to my last class, which is going to be the last class I ever attend. It feels like a milestone in my life — leaving the comfort of academia to finally venture out into the unknown.
Our semesters were cut short almost five weeks ago. Since we received that first email announcing that classes wouldn’t resume until April 12, I had been struggling with the decision to go home to Singapore. The uncertainty surrounding when the University would reopen and the perils of airports and airplanes at a time like this were some of the reasons that this decision was extremely difficult.
I want to start by saying that this is completely natural to feel after a breakup. Your ex-boyfriend was at one point a significant part of your life and someone you cared for, so it’s natural to wonder what he’s up to now. Sometimes even years after we sever a relationship with someone, we wonder what or how they’re doing. This is common, but that doesn’t make it any easier; it’s a tough temptation to get over.
From my fall semester in Paris, I remember one interaction at a grocery store particularly well. I initiated basic small talk in French with the cashier, who seized upon my American accent and responded in English. When he handed me a receipt to sign, he said, “I need your autograph,” unintentionally implying that I was a celebrity. I lived off of this glory for the rest of the semester. It made up for all the other times that my French was shot down.
My mind feels like a graffitied wall. Emotions are scribbled diagonally and circularly in curlicue font and bold typeface. The neon colors are the random FaceTime calls from friends I miss. Black ramblings are the moments right before I go to sleep and right after I wake up and I remember why I’m in the room I left behind three years ago. Why is it that when it is mandated to stay home I want to leave the most?
It can be difficult to practice self-love while in quarantine. Despite what Instagram and TikTok will have you believe, most of us are not doing daily high intensity interval training, baking bread or cleaning our rooms. Many of us are actually just sitting at home losing academic motivation, panicking about summer internships and contemplating whether or not to go outside that day.
Senior set. Many dance groups do it — Eclectics, Korean Pop Motion, SLAM — as one of those college traditions filled with pride and mystery. At each annual dance showcase, the seniors of the club perform a special set of their own, the result of months of practicing in secret and a capstone to our four years at Hopkins.
I have, like the rest of us, been feeling a mushy amalgamation of lethargy and unease. Each endless Sunday I wake up anytime between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m., eat whatever meal feels the most appropriate, and weave in and out of Zoom meetings, naps, Netflix binge sessions and schoolwork.
In this tumultuous yet simultaneously tedious time at home, I have to keep reminding myself that there is a light at the end of tunnel. Though we sadly do not know when we will see the light, how bright it will be, if it is actually there or not, whether or not it will reschedule graduation, if our government is really doing all they can, whether we will even get to vote this year or... sorry, spiraling seems to be a hobby of mine amidst all this (and I’m getting really good at it, if I do say so myself).
Gaslighting, coined from the 1938 play Gas Light, is defined as the psychological manipulation of someone such that they begin to doubt their own sanity and beliefs. In doing so, the “gaslighter” can more easily control and influence their victim.
On my 20th birthday, at the end of March, I had been planning to dress up real cute, round up my closest friends, buy dinner, and then go out and party. It probably goes without saying, but that of course was not what ended up happening. And honestly, I’m fairly sad about it. There’s that surface-level disappointment of having missed an opportunity to look fly and get up to some... shenanigans, but beyond that, it was only while adjusting my birthday plans that it really first hit me just how much I’m missing due to social distancing.
Have you ever felt like you are faking it? More often than not, I find myself deeply concerned that someone will find out who I am really am. Not that I am bad, but rather, not as intelligent or as talented as someone would initially believe. This has affected the way that I see myself as a parent, a member of the military and as a graduate student at a top-tier university.
The past few weeks have been a whirlwind rollercoaster of emotions. I’ve felt everything from ecstatic to guilty to so upset that I found myself sobbing uncontrollably on the floor.