As humans, we spend so much of our time waiting for things to be over. “I can’t wait for this class to finish!” “Can this day just end already?” “How much longer will this pandemic last?”
While I may have dubbed this past year, “the year I spent inside,” I feel that, one day, I might reminisce on the days I spent alone at home. I will remember the countless hours spent checking things off my to-do list and taking care of myself and my loved ones. I will try to forget the dark days and learn from the hard ones. It has been stressful, yet monotonous, living through a pandemic, and a lot of us have had to deal with balancing classes and other important tasks.
In the blink of an eye, I’ve reached the tail end of another milestone in my academic journey. As my final weeks in college edge closer and graduation appears like the light at the end of a long and dark tunnel, I want to take a moment to acknowledge the adventure that was the last 52 weeks. I may never experience quiet, but loud, peaceful, but chaotic, days like those again.
It has been nearly a year since lockdown and it is hard to believe it is already March again. While our spring break may have been reduced to just one day this year, I am hopeful that my lifetime yields plenty of vacation days by the beach.
While I await for the COVID-19 cases to drop, more vaccines to roll out and the summer to near, I am going to take what I learned over the course of these 365 days and enjoy this space between where I am and where I am going. I want to live fearlessly and unapologetically. I want to travel and eat around the world. I want to see my parents happy and my brother successful. I want to love and be loved.
I will admit to having spent a whole year just waiting for things to just be over, but I remember now how pivotal this time in my life is. To graduate, land a job, move out and take control of the rest of my story. If I don’t start seizing the days now, I will have learned nothing from the woman who spent a year in her home, yearning to begin again.
