Item
How Covid-19 Broke Apart and Reassembled My Life: My Mental Health During the Covid-19 Pandemic
Title (Dublin Core)
How Covid-19 Broke Apart and Reassembled My Life: My Mental Health During the Covid-19 Pandemic
Description (Dublin Core)
The Coronavirus is not a one person issue. Everyone has had to deal with it and no one has been unaffected. I would like to recount for the archive my personal struggles during this pandemic so that they may be used for research purposes in dealing with something like this in the future.
Before the pandemic started, I was a senior in high school. I had just asked my girlfriend to prom, which was just a few months away, and I had a 4.5 gpa for my senior year compared to my 3.5 for the rest of high school. I was excited to run spring track and try to break 5 minutes in the mile for the first time in high school. I hung out nearly everyday with my best friends. I had just committed to Suffolk University and was excited for the future.
I didn’t really realize how bad Covid-19 was going to be until what would be our last day of school. It was a thursday, and all of us thought it would be a quick two week break to get rid of the virus and we would all be back. Obviously, that was not the case.
I am a pretty social person, so when the lockdown was announced a week later, I really struggled with staying inside. Even with facetime, xbox live chat, and texting, I was not able to get enough social interaction. I felt extremely lonely. Spring sports were obviously also cancelled. This was just the first domino to fall in a long list of unfortunate events for me that, no doubt, many others experienced as well.
A few weeks into lockdown, my girlfriend called me in tears telling me that her blood condition, which affects her nerve endings in almost her entire body, had gotten much more severe. Even worse, Covid-19 was making it harder to go to the hospital for the treatments. For her health, we had to break up, and I have not talked to or heard from her since.
My older brother had also moved home from college at this point from UMass Amherst. While my younger brother and I have always done well in school and been well behaved kids, the same could not be said for my older brother. An avid weed smoker and oftentimes alcohol abuser, I had to share a room with him for all of quarantine, and continue to do so now. He experienced a lot less rules and a lot more freedom while in college, and did not transition well back to the stricter rules of our household, and often took this out on me. While he did not physically harm me, as I am much stronger than him, he continued to throw flurries of insults and mental abuse at me, ruining my every day. He also did this to the rest of my family, making it hell for everyone at home. At one point, my mother kicked him out, and he had to live with his boyfriend for a while.
My mother also did not deal well with staying inside. She has struggled with her weight almost her entire adult life, and the closing of gyms during Covid-19 made her lose all motivation to stay in shape. She gained almost 100 pounds back in 2 months. My older brother coming home also caused her mounds of stress. Since my younger brother hid in his own locked room, and my older brother screamed or stormed out when my mom got mad at us, she took out all of her frustrations on me for the smallest things, taking away the devices I used to contact all my friends just because I had forgotten to put my shoes away or do the dishes.
My father and my younger brother both dealt much better with the situation, but that did not save me from the rest of my family. After missing school and all my friends, getting my spring sport cancelled, losing my girlfriend, my brother and mother constantly berating and harassing me, and having nowhere to go but my shared room with no privacy, I began to free fall into a major case of depression and suicidal thoughts.
Prior to this pandemic, I had never spoken with a therapist. I used to get bullied in elementary and middle school, but I always had ways of coping such as sports, hanging out with friends, and focusing on school, but now I had a real problem on my hands. After about 4 weeks of struggling inside of my own head, I finally realized I needed professional help. My parents set me up with a woman named Rachel via Zoom, and I talk to her every thursday. She is a licensed therapist, and is part of the new wave of technological medical care in this time of a pandemic. While she has not solved my problems, both the easing of restrictions and her mental guidance has helped me to cope with my situation. I am very grateful for her, and although I am not fully back to where I was before the pandemic, I am continuing to recover to this day. I leave to move in at Suffolk in 5 days, and I could not be more excited for the change of scenery, new friends, and a chance to continue my sport into college.
The pandemic has been hard on everyone, and I am sure that I am not alone in my struggles. I wrote this so that people can look back in the future to realize just how devastating an impact can have on one individual’s life if not handled properly, because Covid-19 genuinely rocked my world.
Before the pandemic started, I was a senior in high school. I had just asked my girlfriend to prom, which was just a few months away, and I had a 4.5 gpa for my senior year compared to my 3.5 for the rest of high school. I was excited to run spring track and try to break 5 minutes in the mile for the first time in high school. I hung out nearly everyday with my best friends. I had just committed to Suffolk University and was excited for the future.
I didn’t really realize how bad Covid-19 was going to be until what would be our last day of school. It was a thursday, and all of us thought it would be a quick two week break to get rid of the virus and we would all be back. Obviously, that was not the case.
I am a pretty social person, so when the lockdown was announced a week later, I really struggled with staying inside. Even with facetime, xbox live chat, and texting, I was not able to get enough social interaction. I felt extremely lonely. Spring sports were obviously also cancelled. This was just the first domino to fall in a long list of unfortunate events for me that, no doubt, many others experienced as well.
A few weeks into lockdown, my girlfriend called me in tears telling me that her blood condition, which affects her nerve endings in almost her entire body, had gotten much more severe. Even worse, Covid-19 was making it harder to go to the hospital for the treatments. For her health, we had to break up, and I have not talked to or heard from her since.
My older brother had also moved home from college at this point from UMass Amherst. While my younger brother and I have always done well in school and been well behaved kids, the same could not be said for my older brother. An avid weed smoker and oftentimes alcohol abuser, I had to share a room with him for all of quarantine, and continue to do so now. He experienced a lot less rules and a lot more freedom while in college, and did not transition well back to the stricter rules of our household, and often took this out on me. While he did not physically harm me, as I am much stronger than him, he continued to throw flurries of insults and mental abuse at me, ruining my every day. He also did this to the rest of my family, making it hell for everyone at home. At one point, my mother kicked him out, and he had to live with his boyfriend for a while.
My mother also did not deal well with staying inside. She has struggled with her weight almost her entire adult life, and the closing of gyms during Covid-19 made her lose all motivation to stay in shape. She gained almost 100 pounds back in 2 months. My older brother coming home also caused her mounds of stress. Since my younger brother hid in his own locked room, and my older brother screamed or stormed out when my mom got mad at us, she took out all of her frustrations on me for the smallest things, taking away the devices I used to contact all my friends just because I had forgotten to put my shoes away or do the dishes.
My father and my younger brother both dealt much better with the situation, but that did not save me from the rest of my family. After missing school and all my friends, getting my spring sport cancelled, losing my girlfriend, my brother and mother constantly berating and harassing me, and having nowhere to go but my shared room with no privacy, I began to free fall into a major case of depression and suicidal thoughts.
Prior to this pandemic, I had never spoken with a therapist. I used to get bullied in elementary and middle school, but I always had ways of coping such as sports, hanging out with friends, and focusing on school, but now I had a real problem on my hands. After about 4 weeks of struggling inside of my own head, I finally realized I needed professional help. My parents set me up with a woman named Rachel via Zoom, and I talk to her every thursday. She is a licensed therapist, and is part of the new wave of technological medical care in this time of a pandemic. While she has not solved my problems, both the easing of restrictions and her mental guidance has helped me to cope with my situation. I am very grateful for her, and although I am not fully back to where I was before the pandemic, I am continuing to recover to this day. I leave to move in at Suffolk in 5 days, and I could not be more excited for the change of scenery, new friends, and a chance to continue my sport into college.
The pandemic has been hard on everyone, and I am sure that I am not alone in my struggles. I wrote this so that people can look back in the future to realize just how devastating an impact can have on one individual’s life if not handled properly, because Covid-19 genuinely rocked my world.
Date (Dublin Core)
Partner (Dublin Core)
Type (Dublin Core)
text
Controlled Vocabulary (Dublin Core)
Curator's Tags (Omeka Classic)
Contributor's Tags (a true folksonomy) (Friend of a Friend)
Collection (Dublin Core)
English
K-12
Date Submitted (Dublin Core)
08/23/2020
Date Modified (Dublin Core)
08/30/2020
02/22/2021
This item was submitted on August 23, 2020 by [anonymous user] using the form “Share Your Story” on the site “A Journal of the Plague Year”: http://mail.covid-19archive.org/s/archive
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