Day 555 of Isolation

I knew for a fact that the pandemic had dragged on too long when the local Covid test administrator for my school recognized me for something I’d done a year ago. “Don’t pass out this time, alright?” We both laughed after I reassured him that I wouldn’t be getting my blood drawn and freaking out so much about it that I nearly lost consciousness. I sat down in the same padded chair in the same conference-turned-testing room in the same lobby, hopefully for one of the last times. The nice lady with the nose ring, who I figured must be intimately acquainted with the nasal cavities of everyone there, gently pushed the swab into what felt like the back of my head, and I thought about how surreal it is that I’m likely only a few weeks shy of being on first-name basis with our specially-hired surveillance testing crew, and how even with the astonishingly-high vaccination rate among my friends and acquaintances, it’s still not time for a normal senior year yet.

Most of June and July felt like my last post - a celebration of the pandemic’s end, in which masking rules were relaxed or ignored, with virtually no consequences. I stayed at school for three weeks for summer research, and we were allowed to go unmasked while outdoors and even use public transportation. Due to my school’s high vaccination rate, they’d released (short-lived) plans to stop masking rules and resume non-Covid-constrained rules about transportation and student interaction. The box of disposable masks that waited by the door was momentarily placed back in my cupboard, and I enthusiastically planned concert outfits for the fall and visited friends’ houses without fear of infection - the pocket of excitement, before it got worse again.

In the past month, the delta variant has brought the US and its citizens a disappointing reversal of fortune. It’s called a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” - a group that, barring those of my friends whose unwise parents have forbidden vaccination, I have little sympathy for. It feels like we were given normalcy for a few weeks only to have it snatched away. So, masks are back, and we’re returning to school in 2021 with restrictions that are, thankfully, much less total than they were a year ago. These rules are annoying, even infuriating for most of us who’ve done everything right for the past eighteen months, but they’re almost-certainly temporary. There’s talk online of a second lockdown, but realistically, that doesn’t sound very probable to me - at least in vaccinated states and counties, we will probably be fine, provided we continue masking indoors. Once again, the stark divide between those suffering and those going back to normal is harshly visible - Alabama hospitals ran out of ICU beds just as new sorority recruits in colleges were showing off their rush outfits on TikTok. Vaccination has seemingly reached a plateau, with the American government and businesses and institutions alike trying to incentivize it among the most stubborn. I and everyone else I know are pretty fed up with this, but since my discussion and accostment of the ignorant has proven fruitless, I’ll turn closer to home - or, now that we’ve all started back, school.

The return of schooling has been the weirdest of all in that it feels illegally normal. Going to sporting events, sitting beside a friend in a classroom, lining up for the soft-serve machine - it’s all back, as it used to be or was supposed to be. I often forget that last year happened at all, dumbfounded that we’ve all been rocketed more than a year into the future and that my fourteen-year-old brother who never stepped foot in an eighth-grade classroom has to go to high school. I’ve met juniors now, a group who hasn’t had a full year of school since their eighth grade year, and I’m realizing the marks that a year off from the pandemic has left on us. We’ve definitely all gotten more into internet subcultures, and the niche clothing styles and music tastes and Instagram-broadcast political beliefs all smack of our year of boredom, isolation, and the desire to express the new personal worlds we’ve developed in a novel scenario - I’m reminded by some junior friends of how comically Netflix-original I must have acted last year. We’re all, to some extent, new students - entering the year knowing no more than half of the people here. With everyone in-person, though, I’m happy to report that the loomings of Facebook and its culture has been less omnipresent, and as the current sack of grain being personally crushed by my school’s rumor mill, I can only hope that the gossip and toxicity that can fester there spill over less into real-life interactions. It’s already been six weeks - what used to be the length of a cohort - and I’m taking comfort in the fact that friendships no longer need to be forcibly accelerated and contained within six-week bubbles but finally have space, a whole eight months’ worth, to change and develop as they’re meant to. We’ve been given the gift of time, and I hope we use it well.

As nearly all schools in my area return with everyone in-person, life is looking up for most everyone I know. I spoke to some friends who were thrilled to just walk through hallways again, as if to say: “Wow! We’re walking to a place that was different than the place we were in before to learn a new subject! What a concept!” They told me that some of their new classes were inevitably difficult, but that being in person has redefined difficulty, making a momentary academic struggle much less daunting. New rooms in my school have opened up that effectively didn’t exist before, like those disorienting dreams in which one’s childhood home sprouts a new wing. And if the meaning of a chair is to comfort, to welcome, to relax, the world just became more than twice as hospitable, with a sudden abundance of seats, no longer necessitating the awkward hovering of one friend in any group. I dwell on these details partially because my favorite English class’s emphasis on “place” has left its mark on me, and partially because I do seek to inform you of my new world. Like the viral YouTube videos about talking to one’s past pandemic selves, I think often about how January me would have jumped at the thought of some extra chairs. Even still wearing masks, happiness is easier to come by now, and I think we do need to remember how bad things used to be in order to see all the wondrous details that have returned to our lives.

Being a senior now (something that still feels untrue) it’s a double whammy of unreality - not only back to school, but back to the biggest, final year of school. I turned seventeen over the summer and had a brief crisis over the thought that soon, I won’t be able to think at every mistake “it’s okay, I’m still just a kid” and have that be legally true. I used to think that high school seniors were so old, practically adults, but now, I sometimes struggle with the idea that I haven’t earned my age, that I don’t deserve to be here, at the beginning of the end of my childhood. The responsibilities of this year feel at once impossible and inevitable - we’re practically adults now, and I can’t decide if I want to be a thriving, self-sufficient twenty-something or to be ten again, worshiping my parents and owning stuffed animals in a socially-acceptable way. “Class of ‘22” used to be simply a part of an Instagram bio, a meaningless date far in the future to indicate anything but the idea that my graduation year will be here in only four months. I don’t feel the same age as the kids in all the movies about senior year, but I guess this is how everyone feels - our bodies didn’t stop edging towards adulthood in quarantine, even if we’ve missed out on some defining experiences of our age up until now, and we’re ready. We have to be.

Stressed seniors may want to skip this next paragraph, because as I’m writing, it’s the beginning of college application season. Visiting a few schools over the summer allowed me to revisit my long-harbored desires and contemplate the storm into which I’m rushing - college admissions at an admittedly elite high school. The whole process is a bundle of statistics and sweat and self-comparison, especially with the amount that the pandemic has altered and sometimes obliterated my favorite activities. There’s ultra-exciting news on the horizon, though, as the governing body of one of the best public universities in the country plans to vote to guarantee admission to graduates with a certain GPA from my school. The news, which first broke as a dubiously sourced article sent to a friend, caused everyone with whom I was sitting in class to clap and cheer - we’re probably going to an amazing school and can stress slightly less about our futures, especially with such a tumultuous junior year behind us. Even with the inevitable stresses and crises of self that come with trying to condense everything good and important about oneself into a finite number of words, I’m just grateful to be applying in a year where we can actually tour schools and trust that we’ll attend college in-person.

I’ll end on a bright note - concerts are back! As I’m writing, I’m preparing to attend my first in two years - masked and outdoors, with friends. Even with some delta-related reshuffling, the return of certainty has made planning a thing again - I’ve been looking forward to this concert for a while, and I could trust that it would happen, which is no small feat now. Life is, once again, inarguably moving forward, and, if nothing else, the upcoming school year is going to be a year of growth. Barring some shocking pandemic developments in the next few months, this post may be my last update until after November, so I’m willing it into existence: it’s going to be a great fall. Take yourselves with care and not too seriously.

XOXO, Quaranteen