Day 190 of (Physical) Isolation

Hi readers! I present to you: a post that is shorter than normal (blame my mismanagement of my workload, or the fact that not much has changed notably for me in the past two weeks). Regardless, autumn is finally coming to my city in the American South, the morning chill imbuing the air with anticipation. Infection numbers vary greatly throughout the United States, but my state is actually doing the best it can, considering the circumstances. Specifics about the spring semester remain hazy for everyone, and it feels like we've given up trying to predict the future after this pandemic went from a two-week break off school to what will probably be at least nine months of funny Zoom backgrounds, boundless family time, and state-encouraged walks. High school students across the country still live in hope of a normal, or semi-normal, spring semester, but estimates about when a vaccine will be available and distributed seem to change every week. These are times when one has to focus on the present and very immediate future, since we're more aware than ever of the fact that literally anything could happen at this point in 2020.

This past weekend has been pretty tumultuous. We lost Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and I'm now genuinely scared of losing my reproductive rights if a new justice is appointed to the Supreme Court before the next election. In other political news, yet a bit closer to home, my school's student government election results were announced. One of the new officers is a close friend, and I'm genuinely excited to see him accomplish his goals and hopefully make an actual change at this school. In other aspects, though, I'm reminded that elections are always going to be a popularity contest and that voters are, as demonstrated by presidential elections, often unaware of their best interests. No place is perfect, not even the school I've idealized for pretty much my whole life, and no constituency is without fault.

Most of the high-schoolers in my state are attending online school, and at least for my public school friends, the amount of work sounds manageable. My friends jet off to the beach or the mountains while attending their reduced-workload classes, and according to social media, most of them seem solidly okay with how online classes are going. It's weird, because living at school for the past few weeks has made me hate Zoom meetings since I'd rather be outside, but I remember loving the social interaction they provided while I was at home, so I know I'll come to once again appreciate the private chats, doorbell sound effects, and digital faces of my friends when that becomes the option to satisfy my extroversion instinct.

On the plus side, though, it's been four weeks and my school is still doing an excellent job keeping everyone safe. We've had one singular positive case, which very well could have been a false positive, and most of the people I consistently surround myself with can be trusted to wear their masks and stay away from others. I've finally become the one who reminds others to social distance, and my nervous statements of, "Hey, guys - social distancing!" have worked all but once, in the case of one plague rat who I am now doing my best to avoid. The percentage of people here who can't follow rules are pretty small, and since we're in the home stretch, most of us are feeling pretty triumphant. Seeing who's good at following the rules makes choosing my friends a much easier task, and I trust the people I (metaphorically) surround myself with.

As I narrow down my circle of friends (or, more accurately, an odd collection of Venn diagrams of friends), I'm realizing that I'm meeting the people who I came here to meet. Apologies to those of you who grow tired of me gushing about my new friends, but I'm finally taking the cute Polaroids, having the late-night conversations, and doing the impromptu singing of Taylor Swift songs I've always dreamed of. Pretty much my whole life, I've had an unrequited, aching love for the idea of friendship, but now that an actual plurality of close friends are here with me, I'm even more in love with the real thing. I feel like I belong here, as cheesy as it sounds. Even with this whole pandemic thing, being at my school is amazing, and I can't even imagine how much I'm going to love it when things are finally normal again.

I am becoming conscious of my time here running out, though, as I now have less than two weeks remaining to live here on-campus and to see most of my friends, who live so far away that it feels cosmically unfair. By the time I write my next post, I'll be living at home again, hugging my three family members and eating home-cooked meals (I'm focusing on the positives here, out of necessity). I've been taking photos and videos constantly, not even trying to hide the fact that, to use teenager lingo (apologies to my mom's Facebook friends), I'm a huge simp for positive platonic interactions and can't help anticipating how much I'm going to miss everyone when we're more than two hundred miles apart. It'll be an adjustment, but I know that the quarantine period has taught me how to maintain friendships, and I finally have a lot more people I care about who I'm going to hold on to.

Huh, "hold on to"- an unintentionally ironic metaphor in the time of social distancing. So many of our figures of speech are about human touch that it can't be an accident. Here at school, where I'm constantly close, but not close enough, to my friends, the touch-starved among us have designated one stick, shaped vaguely like a hand, as a simulacrum of human touch, like a more wholesome twist on that lyric from the song about the Grinch. As comically pathetic as it sounds, I've spent many minutes clinging to that stick like a comfort blanket, but even while doing so, I've realized that a lack of human touch is survivable even for me. Like I've said before, putting your effort into relationships that really matter to you, even when you're far apart, will pay off. (I hope. I'll be spending the next few months pestering my friends to hang out virtually, so I'm speaking it into existence.) And to the people who will soon have a chance to meet new friends in person: use every available moment you have physically at school, with actual people, to its fullest potential. Trust me, it'll go by quickly.

XOXO, Quaranteen