Before the pandemic started, I was very naive. I ended up believing everything that people would tell me, and wouldn’t do anything about it. So when I heard about how a girl in my class was trying to steal my friend’s boyfriend, I ended up making matters worse. Long story short, I ended up getting into a fight with someone, and was late to my physics class.

Two months before the epidemic, my old friend introduced me to a girl from her class that she thought I’d get along with. Her name was Elisee, we had a lot in common, and we had the same sense of humor. We got along very well. That was around two months before the epidemic.

 

In the beginning of the epidemic, I had a lot on my mind, but it wasn’t that bothersome. I decided to try to have a little more fun while I was at home for school. Everyone thought at the time that we’d only be away for about two weeks, so we tried to make the best of it. Schoolwork was easier, I usually was able to complete it in about 15 to 30 minutes, while if it was regular schoolwork, it would take about one or two hours.

The first weekend of the epidemic, I was having some time to myself, until I got a message. The girl I had a fight with sent me a message to me asking me to send homework. Before I was very naive. I thought this girl was my friend, so whenever she needed homework answers, I’d send them to her. So when I told her no, she flipped out. She started to blame me for certain things that I didn’t have control over, then she blocked me on that app. At the time it didn’t bother me so much.

I started talking more with Elisee. We got added to an international group chat, so I ended up making some online friends. They were very nice, all of different ages, ranging from 11 to 21. Elisee and I ended up becoming friendlier with a smaller group of girls on the group chat, we were so close with one another that we made a smaller group chat for us. It was easier to talk with them then most of my school friends, which slowly led up to my school life not being as important as my social life.

 

During the epidemic, I decided to go to Connecticut. It was away from sharing a smaller space with my mother, and not as much city noise. It was to help me concentrate more.

I don’t exactly know what happened, but I had started to slack off in school. I didn’t hand in assignments, I didn't turn on my camera and I never spoke in class. I kept this up for an entire month. It was getting so out of hand, that if this went on for any longer, I may have had to repeat the grade. About five of my averages were under 50%, and the majority of my classes were under the class average. Luckily a teacher told my parents about what was going on. I redid all of my assignments, started participating in class and even turned on my camera. I never understood why I started doing this.

I lifted up every one of my grades. I only had two grades lower than average, yet each one was by a tenth of a point. I proved that in only two months, I could do well. Yet, I also proved, that if dumb rumors didn’t get to me, I could’ve done so much better.

I discovered, to pass time, that I could draw pictures on shirts. It was relaxing, I always liked drawing, yet I always liked trying to figure out what would look nice on shirts. When I got to see my friends in New York, I would give them shirts I drew on, with things that I knew they like. Even if they never wore the shirts, I’ve always liked giving them away.

Since I started drifting away from my school friends, I got closer with my Internet friends. I’ve never liked talking about certain things with people, yet it was easy with them. They always listened to my problems, and even tried to help me stay distracted from certain feelings or thoughts. I even got to help them, which always made me happy to know they might be feeling better thanks to advice I may have given them.

I thought about Black Lives Matter a lot. Whenever I could, I would find online petitions to sign and spread them around. My friends would post many tweets or posts to spread awareness, and many of my friends got to go protest. In some ways, this helped me grow closer with many of my online and school friends, because we tried different things to share our opinions to the world.

I started to paint more to pass time. I did dance classes, but it would seem overwhelming after a while, so when I got to paint, it always helped me get distracted. It was always relaxing, and it got me to do more things with art rather than drawing random sketches.

 

I’m not sure of what will happen for the future. I don’t know if things will be better or worse. All I really want is for the epidemic to end so certain things could go back to normal. In the beginning, not being in school was fun, but an everyday experience like this gets tiring after a few weeks. If anything, I just hope that it’ll be much calmer.