by Espy de la O
In the dark stillness of my room, my thoughts tend to consume me, and it is then I realize I no longer know what to make of my life amid a pandemic. When I look at it from afar, I want something exciting and grand. Not ‘exciting’ in the sense that living through a pandemic should be, but exciting in the sense that I want to be drawn in and utterly consumed by the little things in life. Waking up to my dog licking my face, playing another game of Among Us with my siblings after their insistent begging, turning in an assignment that I pushed away for ‘later.’ But when I look closer and think of the exhaustion pulling away at my flesh and bones after staying up all night finishing that assignment I put off, I think of how much I’m missing out on. The little things simply aren’t enough.
melancholy. It’s not that staying home was an issue, but it was the sudden loss of everything stimulating that I was having trouble coming to terms with. I like going to school, I miss seeing my friends in the classroom, I miss stopping at 7-Eleven for candy and soda and walking to the theater a few blocks away to catch the last showing of a low budget horror film. I liked flipping through books in the library and wishing there was brighter lighting in the hallways because it could get awfully dark once the sun slipped low in the sky. To me, those weren’t little things. They were the big moments that made up my life and they were suddenly gone. All of them. Suddenly I had nothing to look forward to, nothing to distract me. I didn’t know who I was or how to act without those things to rely on.
At least, they certainly didn’t feel like enough before the quarantine. Looking back, I’ve realized now that they were the only things to get me through it. When the first stay-at-home order was issued, everyone turned to gardening, painting, cooking, and more. All I had was my overwhelming sense of
I began to question everything I had thought to be certain. Did I like going to school or did I like seeing my friends? Why did I always go to the theater if I never liked any of the films they showed? Why hadn’t I gone to the library more if I was always so
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