How I Looked at the Bright Side of the Pandemic

When I first moved to the U.S, I was in 7th grade and I was excited to learn a new language and make friends, but what I was more excited about was that I was finally going to have a locker at my school and that one day I was going to have a graduation ceremony like the ones I use to see in the movies, but who knew that this was all going to change and I was never going to have a perfect senior year?.

Suddenly it seemed like everything was being taken away from me, and it all happened so fast. I was four weeks away from my last day of school and my graduation ceremony, and I had many plans.

At the High School I attended in order to graduate you had to complete a senior project which I was almost done with, I had collected soccer cleats to send to kid’s in need from Venezuela and I was so excited to see their reactions, but due to the pandemic, I was unable to do so.

It was also my last year to participate in Track & Field and show off to college coaches in the hopes for a scholarship and all of a sudden that opportunity also got taken away, and once that happened then I started to realize how my senior year started going downhill.

It all started on a Friday when the Governor announced all schools were going to close for two weeks, and I remember one of my teachers telling us to prepare for three months, and after she said that we all looked at her like as if she was going crazy and exaggerating.

After the two weeks the Governor announced how everything was just getting worst and how they were going to extend the Stay at Home order, and they did. After that they announced how we weren’t going to come back to school and I had all types of feelings, I felt sad, mad and disappointed at everything.

And after two months of feeling like s**t, I decided it was time for me to change and to find the positive out of all of this.

I then started by asking my parents to tell me positive things, and they couldn’t come up with anything besides the fact that I was getting more rest. So then I proceeded to purchase a journal, and once it arrived I started to write all the things I disliked about the pandemic and how it took everything away from me, and that was the first step I took to the point where I was actually feeling more relieved.

I started trying new things, like for example; I learned how to play the piano, in only three weeks I was able to play some of my favorite songs. It was keeping me busy and away from all the negative thoughts about the pandemic.

By keeping myself busy and venting to my journal I started to feel better and started to think about the positive things about this whole pandemic, as I learned about myself, and about the things I was capable of doing I started to thank the pandemic, and I started to see it as a blessing.

I guess we can say the pandemic has been a blessing and a curse for everyone in the world, and it may vary for people but for me, it was more a blessing than a curse.

“Staying positive does not mean that things will turn out okay rather, it is knowing that YOU will be okay no matter how things turn out”