Hindsight was 2020, and Now I Can’t Wait for 2022

Written and Photographed by Chika Okoye | Designed by Tamar Ponte

My home in Vegas smells like the scented purple Airwick you get in bulk at Costco. It smells like semi burnt pots and sweet perfume. It smells like my mom cooking soup as she blasts Nigerian music through the house. It smells like comfort; that is until you move away, and you can’t smell home anymore. I missed home halfway through my freshman year of college, and coincidentally enough, the pandemic hit, and not only did it send me home with my crushed dreams of ever attending Marathon Monday, but it shut me into the house I missed so dearly, surrounded by the smells I can’t ever replicate. COVID-19, the virus itself, didn’t alter my life but it forced me indoors and the things that happened behind those closed doors transformed me.

The beginning of the pandemic was odd. I was attending college classes from my childhood bedroom while simultaneously cringing at Gal Gadot and Millie Bobby Brown as they sang “Imagine” in their million-dollar homes. As Americans shut their doors from the outside world, America also closed their borders, confining us all into one of the most transformative modern day civil rights movement the country has seen in decades. During early summer of 2020, we heard the stories and names of Breonna Taylor. Of George Floyd. Of Elijah McClain. Summer of 2020 was grief, and I decided to take a much-needed break from social media as I wanted to dodge the performative infographics that were plaguing my Instagram feed. Through the month of June, I got to hang out with my mom more than ever before and was once again intoxicated by the smell of her sweet perfume. I stayed indoors and because I was now completely locked away from the outside world, I was finding a newfound appreciation for family. Finally, June 21 —my birthday came quickly. I sat at my kitchen table grateful that my family was all there and taking in the smell of home. One thing to note about my family is that every occasion

calls for a gathering at my kitchen table. My mom and dad give their speeches about how far me and my twin brother have come and break out into the story of our dramatic, premature birth.

“Chika, I remember the night I had to rush to the hospital, since your brother wasn’t breathing like it was yesterday,” my mom says after we all say grace and recite 2 Corinthians 13:14.

May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. I remember my birthday dinners vividly because they are always the same, except for that year. I recall my dad speaking very quietly and I thought there was nothing to worry about.

“People in my family start speaking softly at my age,” my dad said before we cut the cake.

After my birthday, my dad lost his voice and weeks passed. On August 6th, about two months of speaking softly later, he was diagnosed with kidney cancer. The only reason we caught it so early was because his lymph nodes were swollen, which caused him to lose his voice. In retrospect, I’m so glad he lost his voice.

I had to fly back to school the next week as my dad wanted me to continue classes in-person. My sister’s school was online, so she stayed home for the semester, and my twin brother goes to school close to home, so all was well. My dad started immunotherapy and I was across the country missing the smell of home once.

My sophomore year was damaging. Recovering from quarantining for half a year and then going back to school to nearly equal isolation was not fun. Factoring in that you’re to endure the Boston winter, with nowhere to hang out with friends indoors on BU’s campus, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. Isolation during most of 2020 affected my mental health in ways I did not anticipate. I spent so much time paving highways in my own mind that I forgot what it felt like to live outside of it. To add to my mental distress, the first month of school had a treat for me. I realized a little too late that my roommate at the time did not want what was best for me, and even worse, tried to manipulate me into opening up about things I did not want to talk about. Because of this, my sophomore year of college was full of panic attacks, vividly intoxicating nightmares, and missed therapy sessions. I want to say that I’m better now, but I push through—the smell of home grounding me because it brings me comfort.

Sooner rather than later, January of 2021 came and we said goodbye to an awful year and christened the new year with tentative hope. COVID vaccinations were around the corner, and I geared up for the second half of the Boston winter. The second semester came and went quickly; to say I was excited to go home for summer vacation was an understatement.

Fresh off the plane in May, I was eager to take a whiff of home, but my comfort soon turned to a sense of uneasiness. On Mother’s Day, my dad didn’t feel well and the very next day we were rushing to the hospital because he couldn’t feel his legs. The doctors found another tumor, but this time, in his spine. It was pressing up against something it shouldn’t have been, and it was affecting his mobility. The day after, the tumor was removed, but there was a long road ahead. I was terrified. I kept worrying about what would happen if something were to go wrong. My summer consisted of hospital visits and tear-filled nights. I gained lessons I never imagined I would gain: knowing what to do when you drive your dad to the emergency room, and what it means to come together as a family. COVID helped me understand the importance of family and the forced togetherness meant so much more than I could have imagined. My dad is still recovering, but he is going to be fine. As much as things are hard, I always remember I have people standing behind me.

Shut behind closed doors, I went through a lot of tough times and needed a way to distract myself. The only thing consistent was my need for academic validation. I didn’t waste any time, using COVID as a unique opportunity to expand internship horizons, and so I applied to internships that were offered remotely since nothing was confined to the city in which it physically operated.

I had the pleasure of interning for the company behind The Maze Runner, and the PR company that basically started

Lana Del Rey’s career. Even more exciting, I achieved my dream of interning for this amazing company, where I had a first look into the world of all things entertainment. The company represents my favorite talent from Olivia Rodrigo to Jeremy Strong; a real dream come true. I am now interning for The Tonight Show, and I couldn’t be more content. Looking back at the last two years, quarantine, and the pandemic that changed us all, I can’t help but want to feel angry. Angry at the world for all that it had thrown at me...but I survived, and for that I am grateful. Up until recently, I had spent my time building caution signs around the first indications of fear, but now I can rip them down knowing that the worst has come. Quarantine pulled me by the hair and required me to be okay with being alone—to be okay with being alone with my thoughts and the changing environment around me. It taught me that all I really have, at the end of the day, is me. Additionally, because I experienced so many life-changing events in a place I used to find comfort in, I got used to dealing with trauma surrounded by the scents of security. I had to overcome that, too. I won’t always have that feeling of security, that sense of home, so I learned notW to depend upon it entirely. Don’t get me wrong, I can still miss it occasionally, but I need to start finding comfort in myself.

The home that I am building for myself may still smell like the scented purple Airwick plugin you get in bulk at Costco. And my mom cooking soup as she blasts her Nigerian music through the house. But now it also smells like the changing Boston air in early September, or my millionth Redbull of the day. Wherever I am, I know now that home is where I make it and I know that my family will always be there, even if they aren’t right next to me. At some points, things got dark, but after this hard year, I still believe all is possible. Maybe I am childish and boring and naïve and hopeful and dangerously optimistic, but it beats accepting the idea that life isn’t worth it. I will find burrows of happiness in the most barren pockets of this world if it means one day, I can say I lived a life worth repeating. COVID taught me that. The takeaway is this: we all learned something during this pandemic and one way or another, your life changed. Learn from it. Use it. Because we all walked into early 2020 with one idea of how life could go, and we were all surprised. I don’t know about you, but even after months of uncertainty, there can still be something attractive about the unknown.