No Really, How Are You?

WRITING

Emma van Guens

DESIGN / ILLUSTRATION

Kimmy Curry

pandemic. There are few things COVID-19 hasn’t taken from us — thousands of lives and jobs have been lost. The past year has meant isolation, loneliness, and the end of the life we knew and took for granted.

But there is something to be said for the other day, I listened to an episode of NPR’s podcast “It’s Been a Minute with Sam Sanders” featuring guest musician Phoebe Bridgers, whose melancholy music was the soundtrack to my 2020. Bridgers brought up something that struck a chord with me — the fact that, for once in our lives, you?” honestly.

great. Now the obligatory answer is, well, you know, everything sucks but…” Bridgers said.

In the era of COVID-19, there is no more running away from how you feel. Perhaps the one positive outcome of the pandemic has been a collective one was ready for their life to be upheaved, and everyone has their story. Here is mine.

Coming up to that fateful week in March when quarantine began, my life felt like running on a treadmill set at an impossible pace. I was falling behind in every part of my life and could hardly keep up — nearly everything gave me extreme stress and anxiety. In the weeks leading up to the lockdown, there was a death in my family, my parents got divorced, and I was going through a tough breakup. Before I was able to process anything, I was packed up and shipped home to sit in my childhood bedroom, alone, isolated, and into a spiral.

Personally, it wasn’t just the isolation and loneliness that made life’s halting so bad for me. It was the weeks, months, and even years of unresolved emotions that returned and plagued me in the early months of quarantine. For once, I couldn’t just distract myself and move on to the next thing. I had to acknowledge my unhealthy coping mechanisms and deal with the mental health issues that I had been too afraid to face before the pandemic.

I’m not alone in this. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the number of adults reporting symptoms of anxiety or depressive disorders has quadrupled since 2019. For 18- to 24-year-olds who are already at a higher risk for these disorders, 56 percent reported symptoms of anxiety and depressive disorders, and 26 percent reported suicidal ideations. For health care workers, parents, and communities of color, there has also been a notable increase in reported struggles with mental health.

These numbers are higher due to harder times brought on by the pandemic, but also potentially because people are forced to face these strained emotions. In quarantine isolation, nothing is more helpful than a stable emotional state. Sometimes it takes losing everything to rebuild something better. Emphasis on mental health — and advocacy for it — has been gaining traction for decades. But it may have taken a radical break from normalcy, one which launched the world into a communal spiral substantial change.

I was raised to think emotions were simply a distraction from hard work and success, and I never really knew how to ask for help. It took hitting rock bottom, with no way of digging myself my mental health. I started a journal, quit calorie tracking, made sure to spend time outside every day, and signed up for counseling and psychiatry. And I’ve learned, after spending months of quality time with me, myself, and I, to practice gratitude and to relish in the little things.

Resources for mental health contacts, coping mechanisms, podcasts, and TED Talks have Northeastern, UHCS provides free counseling, psychiatry, and group counseling programs for students — now over video chat and the phone to stay COVID-safe. Massachusetts has waived insurance copay on telehealth therapy during the pandemic. Some counseling and advocacy groups, such as BEAM and Therapy for Black Girls, communities and people of color who have been hit hardest by COVID-19. The push for personal wellness has been higher than ever, a sliver of a silver lining for the last year.

And here we all sit, nearly a year later. This pandemic is far from over, and life after COVID-19 will leave deep scars for those hit hardest.

But there is hope for a novel form of social consciousness, one focused on the ultimate goal of wellness where we are comfortable vocalizing The world lies dormant, but when we awaken, who will we be? And how will you answer the question, honestly, “How are you?”