Reflections on One Year of COVID-19 Lockdowns: Part I

Happy Tuesday everyone. I hope the start of your week is off to a good note. Today’s post will be short but personal, and as the title indicates, it will be about COVID-19. I hadn’t realized this at the time, but I was listening to a podcast on March 11th when they mentioned it had marked a year since the WHO (World Health Organization) declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. Like many, I have a variety of feelings about this. I struggle to put my feelings into words but I did want to discuss them here so that one day, in a post-COVID-19 world, I can reflect back on these feelings; the ones I am able to identify, at least.

While the 11th marked one year since the WHO’s announcement, exactly a year ago today I was living in France when I found out that the country would be shutting down as a result of this news. The first few days were a stressful mess; my home university was telling me to do one thing and my scholarship sponsors were telling me to do another. I wasn’t sure whether I had to return home immediately or if I would be allowed to stay. At this point I had only just arrived in France two months prior, on January 14th, and I wasn’t at all ready to come home. I didn’t care if I had to spend my remaining three months indoors; I would’ve rather spent three months in my cute apartment in France than in my tiny room back home. Eventually, that’s exactly what I did.

I recognize what a privilege it is to say this but I had a good lockdown. After taking a week off in order to get organized, my university abroad moved to remote learning until the end of the semester. Due to some miscommunications in regard to units, I added an additional online class through my home university. If I wasn’t in class I was reading, painting my nails, talking on the phone with friends, doing schoolwork or cleaning. I grocery shopped once a week (compared to my 2-3 times a week) and towards the end of April I started walking after dinner, but only for up to an hour (per French lockdown guidelines). When I felt especially heartbroken that my brothers and parents couldn’t visit as originally planned, I shopped online. I had many more good days than bad, fortunately.

Now that I’ve detailed the actual events of a year ago, next Tuesday I will go into the feelings a bit more. I hope you don’t mind that I’ve split them up but I felt that two smaller posts would be better than one super long entry. I hope you guys agree.