Two Years Later
Reflecting on the Pandemic
This past Wednesday marked two years since I flew out of Heathrow Airport in the wake of COVID-19. I left my small student studio flat as it was, expecting to return a few months later. Few ended up as six, but I only returned for three weeks in August packing up said flat and placing its contents into storage. This was my way of giving in, of finally resorting to the act of waiting. My parlor palm, which I had gotten in my first week of living in London in 2019, could last a month or two without water. I returned to it completely brown and dry, and it made me sad to look at so I threw it out on my first day of quarantine. The trees in the park outside my window flourished in the summer heat — but there was no more green within those walls. Had I gotten ahead of myself? Hope was seemingly unlimited; did I still manage to take too much?
Looking back two years later, I consider that parlor palm a metaphor for my own growth. I was hopeful enough to expect greenery upon my return, only to be greeted with something to grieve. After packing up my life and flying home, I still somehow expected to come back for my second term in January, but part of me already knew I wouldn’t be. Officially moving out of London was a way for me to close that chapter of my life until the next one was written, and it took a long time for me to accept that it hadn’t been written yet. But I knew deep down that I wasn’t ready. Before the pandemic hit, I was having a hard time living on my own and struggled to find a place to belong. In a way, I was relieved to have an extra few weeks of spring break. I think we all were, at first.
I’m lucky that time served me well. That wasn’t the case for many people, and I still have a hard time processing my personal and collective grief. I think it was the hardest time of my life at one point, trying to function as a normal human being amongst circumstances beyond my control. My classes were at 4 AM the whole year, and I worked 30 hours a week without ever having seen my coworkers smile. My mom, a cardiologist, was one of the first to get the vaccine in November 2020. So I knew there was an end, I just couldn’t see it for myself. But when you reach such deep and dark hopelessness, the only way out is up. You have to make that hope for yourself.
Today’s poem is “The Sun Is Still A Part of Me” by Jennifer Willoughby:
More than ever shy is why I am inside with the sun as my more popular roommate. The sun illuminates my uniform of silence. The sun knows how love is just the distance between unlovable objects. My phone is lying over there. My phone is close to solving the mystery of why I don't answer the phone. I am so busy. I am practicing my new hobby of watching me become someone else. There is so much violence in reconstruction. Each minute is grisly, but I have to participate. I am building what I cannot break.
My classes finished, I sent in my exams, and I cut hours at my job. I spent Summer 2021 working on finding that hope. I spent time with my family and my best friends, I read a lot of poetry, and I started writing this newsletter. I gave myself patience and time to heal, and in July 2021 I was given confirmation that classes would be in person for my final year of university. For the first time in a long time, I actually felt ready. More ready than I was when I first moved — despite crying much harder at the airport the second time around. It makes sense, though, like how you tiptoe around a new apartment as if its newness also makes it fragile.
These days, I’m still careful when making plans. My mom advises me to cut back on my book buying because it’ll be expensive to ship it all home if “something happens again”. Many of the concerts I had planned for this year have gotten postponed, and my best friend was supposed to visit in January. But she’s here now, at the start of the season of hope, taking a nap in the other room as I write this. So, though it feels discouraging to have to hope in moderation, I think it’s a blessing to be able to have any at all.
Further Reading
“What The Silence Said” by Marie Howe
“How will it feel months from now” by Mary Jo Bang
Ada Limón on Preparing the Body for a Reopened World
What I Enjoyed This Week
Recent Reads
“After Opening The New York Times I Wondering How to Write a Poem about Love” by Camille T. Dungy. I love love love this poem. Camille T. Dungy has become one of my recent favorites. I love how she captures the sudden appearance of emotion in the ordinary moments of the everyday. Sometimes I’ll see something randomly and feel a twang of longing. Even if it’s just in the morning paper.
“Children, It’s Spring" by Mary Oliver. I love finding new Mary Oliver poems — this one tells a story, almost a fairy tale, of a flower personified. It’s wholesome and lovely. young fingers, entranced / by what has happened to the world. / We, the older ones, / call it Spring, / and we have been through it / many times.
Other Wonderful Things
Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha. I finished this k-drama recently and it blew me away. I loved the sense of community and depth in all of the characters — k-dramas have especially long episodes and it provides a lot of room to get invested in the stories and relationships involved. The last three episodes made me cry like a baby. If you have the time, it’s definitely worth a watch.
Turning Red on Disney+. I loved how this portrayed the awkward coming-of-age state of being thirteen, of wanting to grow up and break open all the suppressed hormonal feelings. It was such a great example of how important cultural representation is in films like this, and how that specific representation can still be universal in its relatability. I found a Google review of a 12-year-old who wrote: Thanks so much for making this movie cause i know that a bunch of 12 and 13 year olds go through this and we may not be able to turn into a red panda but the red panda is a thing we all have its how we react to things and how we are as a person we are all weird and our weirdness is what makes us who we are. I thought that was cute.
Thank you for reading, and happy Spring Equinox (and a very Happy Nowruz as well, from mine to yours)!
<3
Tara