untitled sean orenuga

So, here we are…

In the middle of a pandemic.

I remember a time where we could walk around the city, go to the grocery store, attend events, and just live life the best we knew how.

Now, you better not be caught leaving the house without a mask, maybe some hand sanitizer, and definitely a supreme level of self-awareness as you track where your hands touch, where your feet go, and how others move.

It’s crazy to think about how our daily mantra went from “living our best life” to ”social distancing” and “quarantine” and all those cool media buzzwords: “hotspot”, “superspreader”, and well, whatever the hell Donald Trump managed to cook up on Twitter.

Has anyone ever paused to think about what’s actually going on? Seriously. We are living in the midst of a global pandemic. That is nothing short of overwhelming. And then, you start to add on the sheer volume of disaster and injustice that is going on around the world. The chances of all of this going on at the same time seems impossible. This can’t really be life, can it?

Everyone goes through their own personal struggles as we grow in life. But, they’re usually just that. Personal.

Personal Growth. Independence. Self-actualization.

All things that we truly strive for because the human experience demands it.

Except now, there’s this thing that torments the human experience as we once knew it.

So, I start to wonder if we are in a simulation. Are we paused? Is this some sort of limbo? Did the person playing a Planet Earth version of Sims just say “Hey, what’s the worst that could happen?” when pushing some random buttons?

It’s like a paused Netflix show of (insert your name here)’s life that you were going to return to until there were too many people on the account and you simply had no choice but to move on to something else.

Don’t get me wrong. I recognize that even the ability to vent my thoughts and feelings about this is a privilege rarely afforded to the average person. And for that, I am thankful.

I sincerely hope that anyone and everyone going through something right now will be blessed with the tools to get through it and return to their version of “as we once knew it”.

I merely hope that one day, I can look back in time and restart from the ellipsis. x

ART by MADELINE KOMAR