I feel that, in the midst of a pandemic, I'm required to talk about said pandemic. I want to talk about it, don't get me wrong. I mean, I get it, it's a really big deal. Like "ends up in the history books" type big deal. But quite frankly, I'm a little tired of it. I'm tired of hearing about it. I'm tired of it interrupting my life. And before I can talk about the pandemic, before I can make peace with the pandemic, I just have to be mad at the pandemic.
So hey Coronavirus. I hate you. And I'm going to tell you all the reasons why.
In order to get a clear vision of my frustration, I'm going to take us back to the beginning of 2019. The very beginning. I started that year in need of a change. Desperately. I was newly 18; so close to the end of high school I could taste it. But of course that meant that I was also that close to an entirely new lifestyle. And that-- well that scared the crap out of me. Because the lifestyle I was entering required an immense amount of independence, and I hadn't allowed myself much independence in the year prior.
They talk about high school sweethearts like it should be everyone's goal, you know? Meet someone young, follow each other to college, get a degree you'll probably never use, get married straight out of college, have kids, and then stare at your framed diploma on the wall while changing dirty diapers, wondering what your life would have been like if you had just followed your own path. Sounds delightful, doesn't it? I never wanted that for myself. But my boyfriend at the time, he surely did. Perhaps not my overly morbid version, but he liked the idea of high school sweethearts as much as the next person did. And to be honest, I don't blame him. We grew up in a small town where everyone knew everyone. Like someone asks where you're from and you say Tampa but you really don't mean Tampa. You mean some yeehaw town right outside the city where you see the same group of people everyday, and you know the grocery store workers by name, and you can most definitely use the basketball hoop in the neighbor's driveway without having to ask. Most people who grow up in this kind of town get stuck in this kind of town. But most people who get stuck in this kind of town get stuck by choice. It's comforting to grow old in the place you grew up. Most people are content with going to school locally and getting a job locally. Most people are okay with raising a family in the town they were raised. And for a while I convinced myself that's what I wanted too-- My first mistake.
That's what you do when you're in love though. You convince yourself that you're okay with changing your original plans to meet the needs of the other person's plans. When it happens in the movies, that stuff is ROMANTIC. I mean who doesn't root for the girl to drop her life goals to travel the world with a boy who has no sense of stability. I live for that shit. I eat it UP. But in real life, lemme tell ya, it ain't that simple. In my case, you're either a small-town-type, or you're not. I liked where I grew up. But I have had ants in my pants since I could walk, and there was simply no possible way that I could convince myself that I genuinely wanted to stay in my small town forever. The big city energy simply cannot be ~contained~.
My mom always reminds me,"This stage of your life is the only time you're allowed to be selfish. So BE selfish." The problem arises, however, when your boyfriend is in the same stage of his life and is also allowed to be selfish. Our perceptions of selfishness were quite different though which was cause for conflict. To me, being selfish meant putting your best interest above everyone else's-- Not asking someone else to compromise themselves for your benefit. So now picture me at 18, itching for a change. Anticipating that college life, baby. Basically crawling on my hands and knees in the direction of anywhere other than here. And then having my boyfriend, whom I loved and respected, get upset that I was choosing my future over the convenience of our relationship. I mean, of course this took a toll on my excitement for my future. I was too busy worrying about my relationship to get excited for what the universe had in store for me.
And then January 31st came around. And my life changed. I was sitting in a library at the local community college, pretending to be doing homework but really just refreshing my computer screen every 12 seconds. And then finally, after one particular refresh, confetti started falling from the top of my screen. "Congratulations, New Nole!" It said in big letters,"On behalf of Florida State University, it is my pleasure to welcome you to the Class of 2023." Cue the part where all those small town country singers and the all Nicolas Sparks of the world stand in my ex boyfriend's corner and shun me for choosing my own future over his. But if there's one thing I know for sure, it's that being selfish turned out to be the best decision I have ever made, to date, and no country song will ever be able to convince me otherwise. I'm sure you anticipated that we broke up over this, and you anticipated correctly. The bottom line is-- he liked small towns. I felt suffocated by them. And neither of us should have had to change for the other. A part of me wonders how I would have written this story if I had written it when I still loved him, but the way it turned out is an indication that ending the relationship with him simply strengthened the relationship I have with myself. Everyone loves a good high school sweetheart story, but that just wasn't in the cards for us. And I do hope he's out there being selfish for his own future too.
But nonetheless, the end of this relationship only allowed my next one to blossom. With whom, you might ask? Her name.. was Tallahassee. (Yes, her. I'm boycotting men at the moment.) CUE THE OVERLY PEPPY MONTAGE MUSIC, DJ.
Fast forward a few months. I have my face in a sink.
"DUDE you need to listen to my horoscope and tell me this isn't so freaky."
"Listen to your what?" I say over the running water.
"My horoscope. Okay listen. 'Today you may be feeling overly-'"
"Wait talk louder, I can't hear it" I'm yelling at this point. My face is covered in soap. My roommate is curled up in bed. This is our norm. And a very beautiful norm at that.
Living in Tallahassee brought out a side of me that I had never seen before. I know that I've always had potential to succeed, but in high school it just felt like pent up potential that wasn't being used. In college, it was used in just about every aspect of my life-- beginning with the potential to surround myself with whoever I pleased. And I did just that.
Leading with a giant sorority of empowering women. One of which, was Julia---- Julia who was originally from Tampa (but not Tampa, a small town outside Tampa that no one's heard of. You know the drill by now.) but I had not met until moving to Tallahassee. I knew of her. Our families were friends, but we had never met before. I saw her during sorority recruitment and I introduced myself, only to see her later that week on the Bid Day Bus back to our sorority. And for those of you who were never involved in Greek life and have no clue what I'm talking about, basically what happened was---- fate put a girl who was destined to be my best friend into the same sorority as me. And the rest was history. Julia went from being a stranger to basically being mine and Destiny's honorary third roommate. My mom bought me an air mattress at the beginning of my college career, and never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that it would be used as much as it was. It's no longer an air mattress. It is Julia's bed and anyone else who sleeps in it is a GUEST and that's that. She became my go to "please drop whatever you are doing to go to CVS with me" person because I knew she would always say yes. I am directly referring to the CVS that is walking distance from campus. She is quite familiar with this CVS because she has spent an unhealthy amount if money in it.
During our walk back from one particular CVS run for self tanner, I remember saying,"I don't know how I'm going to be able to leave for grad school knowing that you won't be sleeping on an air mattress next to me every night. You're just going to have to come with me." And when I looked at her, she had full on tears running down her face.
"I'm so glad FSU brought me my best friend." She said. And then we proceeded to self tan.
And you know what goes really good with a new tan? Corrine's clothes. And no, that's not the Tallahassee version of Forever 21, even thought it may as well be. I've been stealing Corrine's clothes since I first met her. Our friendship is basically founded on the words "Corrine can I wear this?" And not only would she say yes, but she would also offer me a hair tie that would match my eyeshadow. And then proceed to hype me up in the most obnoxious way possible. That's just how we worked. Going back and forth encouraging each other to do stupid things and see how far we could take it. Once we made up a game to see how many fake names we could give to the boys who came up to us in one night.
"Hey baby, what's your name?"
"Oh me? My name's Samantha. And this is my best friend Grace." And then I'd have to go the rest of my night trying not to giggle every time this random drunk guy referred to me as "Samantha."
Corrine's 2 years older than me but when we're together it kind of feels like we traveled back in time to when you were twelve and everything was new and exciting and ridiculously carefree. Like when you had free time to play with sidewalk chalk on a random Tuesday night. Me and Corrine make the free time, except not on Tuesdays, but on Mondays. And not for sidewalk chalk. For the Bachelor. Because sometimes you really just need to eat a sweet potato and watch some terrible reality TV with your best friend.
College brought me so many friendships like this. Of course I had made friends all throughout my life, but there's a BIG difference between college friends and regular friends. And you simply cannot understand what I mean by this unless you've been plopped in the middle of a giant university, without knowing a single person, and built friendships that started with "where are you from" and turned into "wait can you feel my leg and tell me if I need to shave or not?"
In fact, one of the people I ask that question far too frequently is Enrique. The only man on the planet that will-- first get annoyed with me for asking him, but then proceed to give me an honest answer on whether or not my leg needs shaving. I met Enrique during our summer session. He lived in the dorm room across the hall from me. I mean like his door was a step and a half from mine. I could probably touch my door with my right foot and simultaneously touch his door with my left. We lived close. You get the gist. Which was unfortunate for him because any time I wanted to walk to the basement to get snacks at the vending machine, he was required to come with me. Over the summer I got a nasty case of bronchitis and was in dire need of cough medicine. In the middle of the night. So Enrique went out and walked to CVS (the same one that was previously mentioned. I swear CVS did not sponsor this blog post.) just to get me cough medicine. It turned out to be closed.. So yes, I did send him to CVS in the middle of the night for literally no reason, but this is the type of friend this boy is. On Valentines day, we went to the grocery store to buy chocolate covered strawberries in bulk when all of the sudden he disappeared. When we finally found him, he was handing the cashier a bouquet of flowers.
"She's cute and she shouldn't have to work on Valentine's day," he said. (All of the women reading this are melting right now. He's a catch ladies, grab him while you still can.) To me, it seemed that just knowing Enrique made me want to be a better person.
Along with being a better person, came a bit of self reflection. By this time, it was 2020. And it had occurred to me that I was set to graduate with a bachelor's degree in 2021. Now, I've got a fairly decent track record, graduating 2 years early and all. But I realized that grad schools don't care about how old I am. They just care about how much experience I have. And guess how much experience I had? The answer is none. Literally none. But not for long. By the time my spring semester rolled around, I had already held a leadership position in my sorority, I had been admitted into a Greek honors society, and I was working as a videographer for an online magazine. I was running at full speed around the clock. School work, and magazine meetings, and filming sessions, and chapter every Sunday. I loved it. And I truly think it's because the people I surrounded myself with encouraged me. And that was the big change for me-- to be surrounded by people who wanted me to succeed as badly as I wanted it for myself. And if anyone did that the most, it was Lexi. I could call Lexi right now, in the middle of a pandemic and ask her if she wanted to skydive and she would be like,"Sure what time?" And that's the best way I can describe her. She just doesn't ever want to miss out on life. Ever. I always say that I can I really soak up a moment while I'm living in it, and she is the exact same way. There have been times like-- when we're taking a road trip to Orlando listening to old One Direction songs or dancing around a kitchen in the middle of the night, where she and I literally stop in the middle of it all just to acknowledge how happy we are in that moment. She reminds me how badly I don't want to miss out on life. Ever. I remember one day before our Spanish class, when she had quite abruptly mentioned that she had signed up to study abroad in Spain over the summer. So nonchalantly, that she may as well have just told me what she ate for lunch---- not that she was moving to a different country for 2 months. And it got me thinking-- what in the world am I going to do with my summer? Which then led me to do some poking around and land myself an internship at a film editing company in Manhattan. BIG CITY ENERGY, BABY!!
At last, my little seed of potential sprouted into the most beautiful little garden of success, and it was only just beginning. And then the world very inconveniently decided to crap out on me.
And that's where you come in to play, Coronavirus. I am now sat in my backyard at my house in my "small yeehaw town right outside Tampa" about 4 and a half hours away from the city where I left all my success. And that is why I hate you.
When they first announced that our courses were being held online for the rest of the semester, I cried. For a solid hour. And my dad kind of sat there and looked at me like,"Is this weirdo seriously crying over school being canceled?" But no string of words in the English language would be able to explain why it was so much more than just canceled school. It was canceled late night study sessions in the library. It was canceled roommate tik toks. It was canceled Bachelor nights, and chapter meetings, and CVS runs.
And then I think about where I was at this time last year. You know, the best year of my life that I've been talking about this whole time. And believe it or not, this time last year, I was in the midst of a heartbreak. I was facing the reality that I would be moving hours away from my family. I was in the middle of a very demanding school year. I was in need of a change. And I realize that the good part of 2019 didn't come until far later in the year. So perhaps 2020 is doing the same thing. Perhaps 2020 has to go through some bad stuff so that it can do a full 180 and be remembered as the year that the world was infected by some nasty lung virus but then the entire planet came together to stop the spread and suddenly the economy started booming and the people learned during their time in quarantine that they need to gain a greater appreciation for life-- so people started traveling the world and chasing their dreams and falling in love and being selfish.
Yesterday, I found the free time to play with sidewalk chalk. And something told me that 2020 hasn't given up on us quite yet.
