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Sometimes you never know something is going to happen until it does. And that was certainly the case with the COVID-19 pandemic. When you describe the situation out loud it almost sounds like you’re playing one of those ‘What if’ games. “What if a deadly virus shut down the whole world for a year forcing everyone to stay inside their houses and killing 45,000+ people every day!” You were living in a nightmare that you couldn’t wake up from.

Living during a pandemic was tough, there were a lot of changes that took time to adjust to. Some of the biggest were online work/school, mask mandate, six-feet social distancing from all human beings, and not knowing whether you’d have enough toilet paper. And the funny thing is that the thing I was most worried about was getting the vaccine (I was terrified of needles) that didn’t even exist yet.

Sometimes I try to think about how quarantine changed me. I appreciate a lot of things now that I never gave second thoughts to. Like being able to hug and touch my friends, as well as getting to go to school. You never really think about something that has become so normal to you until it’s missing. My main sources of social interaction had been caught off from me, things that I took for granted before. And now I realize that it is the little things we should appreciate.

I’ve also become much more introverted through quarantine. I used to be the most extroverted person ever, and spending time alone was something I despised just because of the sheer boredom. Whereas now I value that alone time. It’s a time I need so that I can recharge and chill down a little bit, maybe even reflect on the positive and negative aspects of my life. I can now entertain myself which was something I always struggled with.

But this, this was too much alone time. I think I speak for everyone when I say that there are no words to describe the isolation humanity felt during the pandemic. We all had to work to make sure that we still got to see our friends and family even if it was at a distance, outside in the cold, wearing masks. And when we couldn’t, well that was when the joys of technology came

in. We were all just one zoom call away from each other. How easy it was to hop onto a call and instantly be connected to your family. That is when I started to think about how lucky we were to be living in this pandemic during the 21’st century. Imagine the pandemic without the modern technologies that society had created.

I’d be lying if I said I enjoyed living during the pandemic. That’s certainly not the case. I won’t shine a light on such a horrible situation. But I think it’s good to reflect on what we learned while living in it.