Day 564 of quarantine. I haven’t seen the light of day in ages. The sounds of birds, the feel of a cool breeze, just the outside world in general, are all distant memories to me at this point. I met someone today and they go by the name Janay. Apparently she’s my sister and we’ve been coexisting for 16 years now. She’s not that bad of a person.
Jokes aside, quarantine has been pretty boring for the most part. I’ve become impulsive during these past few weeks. I’ve dyed my hair multiple times, painted my nails a bit, and started painting one of my shoes. I need some form of change. It’s almost driving me crazy. I know it’s all for the greater good though, I’m doing my part to protect both my parents.
If I’m being honest, I’m taking this whole quarantine thing seriously because both of them are high-risk. My mom’s immune system isn’t the strongest because she has kidney failure and my dad has respiratory problems. We refuse to go anywhere unless we absolutely have to. We’re constantly cleaning everything within the house and just making sure to be as cautious as possible. If we ever need to go to a store, my sister or I go and pick up supplies to limit their exposure to other people. Whenever we get home, my dad says “spray yourself down with a disinfectant and get a couple squirts of hand sanitizer after washing your hands.”
I think about their needs during this time rather than my own desire to go out and attempt to have fun. The thing that scares me is that I could potentially come in contact with one person out of the hundreds in a store and maybe expose my parents to those germs. I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself if something like that happened.
My parents aren’t too fearful during this time. In fact, they’re in good spirits. My mom is just really happy that everyone is getting to spend all this time together right before I go off to college in a few months.
I’ve bonded with my sister a lot more now, too. She’s become my best friend over these past weeks, despite her multiple threats to possess me using random latin phrases. I’ve taken more naps that I’d like to admit and my sleep schedule is completely trashed. I have no idea how to fix it at this point. Luckily, there hasn’t been too much work for me to focus on getting done.
I’ve kept myself busy by doing a lot of writing, mostly poems and newspaper articles. The most exciting thing that’s happened so far is that I’ve gotten in contact with an old elementary school friend. He’s in Florida and says that he’s experiencing some of the same things.
I’m optimistic that things are going to calm down eventually and everyone is going to have a summer break. I hope summer will be a time for seniors like me to make up for everything we’ve missed out on like our Senior prom. Our last dance, our big night was stripped away from us. I’m not expecting to do a lot of large gatherings, and I’m not a big partier in the first place, but I have to party like it’s 1999 just one more time before going off to college . It’s just tough to hold onto that optimism because there’s no vaccine yet, so social distancing might be around for quite a few months, if not a year.
