On the day covid began, my girlfriend of two weeks dumped me via text. We met at a small costume party where we jammed out to whatever the DJ decided to play. We went home exhausted but happy. Now, I can’t even imagine going to a party, let alone one without masks. Us teenagers date, party, make friends and make mistakes, but that stuff becomes impossible when lives got put on the line. Relationships became long distance and friends changed their minds. Summer became just like all the other seasons, but it burned just a little more.

     One of the most important things that I learned while confined in my tiny bedroom came from my science teacher of all people. During the climate change unit, my teacher displayed a documentary containing videos from various politicians and news stations. The ones that he showed disputed climate change and showed a bunch of rich white men looking at this inevitable issue from a business angle versus a common sense one. My teacher paused the documentary after the video clips ended to say something that I still think about daily. “Some things just shouldn’t get politicized.” Politics run as a two party system. If one party believes one thing, then the other party will do anything and everything in their power to prove the other side wrong. My parents raised me in a blue state as a democrat. We went to Michigan, a red state, on the weekends where I got the chance to see other opinions first hand throughout my childhood. Most people don’t have the privilege of experiencing both parties and having parents that allow them to make their own unbiased political decisions. I watched friends from both parties get along just fine, until politics got brought up. All of the sudden, a verbal brawl would break out between them, causing back and forth bickering for days. Both parties wanted to sound the smartest, but ended up sounding like morons. Although we need debate in some situations, we shouldn’t argue about life or death situations like the pandemic.

       Friends don't come easy in the midst of a pandemic, and as the dedicated weird kid, making friends never came easy. When covid struck, leaving the house began to only occur on special occasions. This meant that I had to resort to social media, along with the rest of the country. Within days, society grew more connected than ever. News spread at the speed of light while old issues got dusted off and brought down from the attic. Growing up in a primarily white area, I never learned about racism the way most people did. No one told me that police shot innocent people, or that doctors committed malpractice towards black women. If corona hadn't happened, I honestly don’t think that I would look at the world through the same pair of bluish grayish eyes. Until that point, the word “racist” never really crossed my mind in instances other than in the white washed history classes that I grew up with. Through social media the term “change” actually started to mean something to me because I had the chance to do something on the stage after only acting as a backup. My browser became filled with tabs from change.org and government petitions. I began to remember the names of the dead like George Floyd and Tamir Rice. My music taste shifted from racist white men to queer women of color. On the first page of Macbeth, line 13, the witches read the famous line, “fair is foul, and foul is fair.” In the play, this line mostly applied to the people in power and how they got there/who stayed there. I think this applies to views of racism and politics because the evil get praised and the good get shut down. All of the horrible people put in power somehow convinced the general public that they had fair upbringing and fair policies, when in reality they reek of evil. When looking at movies today, we don’t see as much of this idea because Hollywood thinks that we want to see the underdog, but I think that this concept needs more representation in the media. Besides, those same foul men make all of the movies and shows that we watch, along with the awards that they “earn.”

        Teenage brains ache, mine definitely does. I don’t know about adults but each one of us just shows the public a version of ourselves that we want them to see; just a moving carcass. Our mental health dropped so low that we can hardly stand up. Therapy, social work, psychiatrists, hotlines. Do the people on the other side of the abused screen know me anymore? All those programs for us with the “crazies”. They all space us out according to tape on the floor. No goodbye hugs or card games. Eating alone, silently oh so silently. How can we learn through muffled words and plastic shields? How can we work when our textbooks die and our notes disappear? Will the next generation know the difference between a stylus and that wooden stick with an eraser? I don’t know. I do know that the breakout rooms will stay as quiet as the gyms during last year's “prom”. We lost time and gained knowledge. I don’t think that counts as a fair trade. I miss water fountains and lockers. Bad cafeteria food and coughing in each other’s faces. I miss hating school instead of relying on it for the minimal entertainment that I can obtain. 

        Having ADHD during this pandemic grew unbearable within the first day on zoom. Sitting still and listening to a once lively teacher drone on and on for an entire day makes the term “lost at sea” sound as exciting as a new avengers movie. Teachers at the start of the pandemic didn’t let students turn off their cameras. As someone who gets bursts of energy, this felt like The things that never amused us in class suddenly have meaning. The only issue lies in the student reactions. We don’t really know how to react anymore, because the pandemic numbed us all to the point of madness. After this torture. Only one or two breaks per class didn’t allow enough time for me to actually get all of my energy out which would lead to angry commentary from the teachers about why my screen displayed black. I just didn’t want people to see me sprinting around my house in an attempt to calm down. I can't stay in the same environment for six hours a day every day without having at least one massive energy burst. I can’t wait to grow up and not have to deal with this garbage.