WERKING FROM HOME

Staying home means that experimentation with self-expression, style, and new hobbies takes place in solitude now more than ever before

t is something no one expected. One day you are sitting down with I friends and family playing games and watching movies and seven months later you are laying in bed with an existential feeling of loneliness, wondering if this will ever end. How could life just stop and how were we supposed to adjust to spending all of our time alone with our own thoughts? I remember the first few weeks of quarantine, I baked almost everything you could think of from apple pies to croissants. I even tried a couple of TikTok trends and made whipped coffee at midnight, causing my sleeping schedule to be virtually non existent. After about four weeks of sitting in my room and trying to busy myself with miniscule tasks, I had to face my own thoughts and sense of loneliness. Facetime and Zoom calls could only cure my isolation for so long before the foreboding idea that this pandemic would never end. No one wants their youth taken away from them, and as a college student who is trying to start the rest of their life, this year has caused a lot of unknown chaos that everyone is trying to figure out on their own. Living in the unfamiliar, people have looked to the things they know to provide a sense of comfort along with discovering things about themselves that they haven’t had time to explore.

“I started painting a lot during quarantine. I found that it was a really good way for me to put my feelings onto something tangible. I also started studying astrology and numerology a lot more. Studying different elements of spirituality also really helped me gain a better sense of who I am,” says IU college student Grace O’Brien.

“Painting definitely served as a way for me to express myself during quarantine. I also used Pinterest a lot to start visualizing different areas of my life and things that I wanted to work on post quarantine. My favorite way to express myself is through the clothes that I wear and I found that during quarantine I was able to hone in on a specific style that suits me best,” O’Brien went on to say.

It is hard to put into words how quarantine felt because everyone had their own, dif-

BY BAILEY RUOLO

ferent experience but O’Brien phrased it well.

“Being alone teaches you a lot about yourself, and it forces you to be your own friend. Even though quarantine was extremely difficult at times, I feel that if I hadn’t had that time to myself then I wouldn’t be the same person I

am today,” O’Brien said.

To be trapped with your own thoughts can be absolutely terrifying in many ways but you may be surprised at what you find out about yourself. Not everything will be positive but finding yourself and figuring out your own self expression doesn’t come from just looking at the good things in life.

IU student, Rachel Etabo, found quarantine to be completely isolating and very difficult to get through.

“When COVID started getting extremely serious I was still in Bloomington and all my roommates left once school said we could. I was here for all of the summer working. I was constantly alone and didn’t have many friends in town anymore. At first, it was easy but the more I was alone the more depressed I began to get. It was becoming hard for me to be alone and my depression began to get worse,” says Etabo.

While many of us would like to say we made it through quarantine intact, everyone had their own personal hardships that they dealt with and no one came out of quarantine the way they went in.

“I was trying to stay busy so I wouldn’t be too worried about my problems. I’m an overthinker and I have a lot of anxiety on a daily basis, so I had to deal with a lot of problems during lockdown that affected my mental health negatively which resulted in this causing me to develop depression for months but I later realized that was not the correct way to handle that and eventually figured things out and I’m doing way better now,” Etabo went on to say. “I had to do a lot of healing and self realization. I’m glad I got time to do this because if I didn’t, I don’t think I would be where I am now.”

In the world of uncertainty that we currently live in, it is hard to look ahead and try to see the positives but through this time we are also learning how to discover ourselves and what makes us who we are. Etabo gave some good words of encouragement for those who are feeling like there is no way out of this.

“Make sure to take care of yourself. We tend to forget to do that and let ourselves get too deep into our problems. Let yourself get a break and just relax once in a while,” says Etabo. “You deserve it.”

photography directed & edited by: Lucas Bishop shot by: Isabelle Trusty head stylist: Arianne Dora modeled by: Grace O’Brien, Rachel Etabo