Summary: This article explores the author's personal experiences with the pandemic, including coping with lockdown, tensions at home, drifting apart from their social circle, and feeling overwhelmed by the internet. Despite facing challenges and struggles, the author emphasizes the importance of acknowledging and validating personal experiences.

Takeaways:

🔑 Adapting to new ways of learning, such as online resources, can open up new opportunities for growth and development.

🔑 Recognize that the pandemic has affected people differently, and tensions at home may arise due to changes in daily routines and restrictions.

🔑 It's common to feel a sense of isolation and distance from friends during the pandemic, but it's important to communicate and maintain relationships.

🔑 Overexposure to negative information on the internet can contribute to feelings of overwhelm and helplessness. Practice self-care and set boundaries with online consumption.

🔑 Validate your own struggles and experiences, even if they may seem insignificant compared to others'. Everyone's pain is valid, and acknowledging this can foster empathy and understanding.

Experiences During the Pandemic

The Impact of Fear and Isolation

Although experiences with the pandemic vary, they all stem from the same root circumstances: fear, distortion, paranoia generated worldwide and isolation.

Transitioning to Online Learning

I completed both the final year of my high school and first semester of my college during COVID-19. The lockdown robbed me of the chance to create many pleasant memories with friends, but it also opened a whole new avenue of online resources and possibilities I never knew existed. Sticking to a single hardback source of information was never my style to begin with, so when documentaries, TED talks, and assignments typed in Microsoft Word became the new norm for learning, it was a welcome change for me. But little did I know that my relief was short-lived.

Struggles within the Family

While I was coping just fine with being holed up inside the house the whole day, not everyone in my family shared the same sentiments. Before I get into this, I would like to clarify that my folks are very peaceful and loving. But this new way of life was making them agitated and restless, especially the elders, who were not used to such forceful restrictions on their freedom. There were conflicts, fights, and disagreements over the most trivial things blown out of proportion, and soon enough it created a very gloomy and unpleasant environment in the house. Countless days passed when I only came out of my room to eat and shower, too afraid to even look at someone in fear of starting a verbal skirmish I did not want to go through in the slightest. All that tension was making me feel low and uneasy, keeping me on edge every time I talked to someone else. I don’t blame them; if I wasn’t as into studying and reading books as I am right now, I would be at my wits’ end too if I was practically locked up.

Drifting Apart from Friends

Next came the “drifting apart from my social circle” phase. I did not have any social media handles, so I was already a little out of the loop with my friends. But after we stopped seeing each other regularly in school, we started talking less and less. To the point when phone and FaceTime calls were long, awkward silences. It made me really upset; was this all our friendship was?

Dealing with Disturbing Thoughts

Now that the internet was my whole life, coming across disturbing things and overthinking about stuff was slowly becoming an impossible rut to break. Eco-anxiety, paranoia about the future of humanity, uncertainty about the future; you name it, I’ve been through it. It felt worse than depression. It wasn’t a loss of motivation; it was an overwhelming feeling of helplessness that hit me at the most unpredictable of times.

Acknowledging Real Struggles

While many might be inclined to believe that such things are “first-world problems,” I believe they are still real struggles. Only the wearer knows where the shoe pinches. Yes, many have been through worse, but that doesn’t mean I get to downplay the pain of others.