Three Years Ago

Hello readers. I’m writing today with reflections on the spring and summer of 2020 and COVID. If this is a topic that is too hard to read about, please skip this newsletter and take care of yourself. Tomorrow’s newsletter will be pandemic-free! For everyone who decides to read, think of this newsletter as a time capsule from the heart.

The past week has been a surreal one for me. It would be just another day in March, and then I’d remember that this marked the three year mark of when COVID hit my corner of the world. I’d be bemoaning having to go somewhere and then remember when I would have given anything to be able to go somewhere inside - anywhere at all. I think it’s hitting me harder this year than the past two because those years we were still in the thick of it. I was just getting over my own infection last year at this time and my school was still fully masked and tracking. There was no reflecting because we were still fully living it. Two years ago I wasn’t sleeping because I was desperately trying to get a vaccine appointment and mourning the passing of my best friend’s father.

This year is different, although people I love are still getting COVID, because where I live and work, there are absolutely no external differences from February 2020 other than one or two people in my school building being masked at any given time. Whenever I realize it’s been three years ~ already? only? ~ it’s major whiplash to remember what we have been through, but also be right back where we were.