An email to one of Lexi’s volleyball coaches about quarantine.

This pandemic hit me with a truck, dragged me for thirty miles and left me in the middle of the road. When it first hit I was bewildered by the fact that there was no cure, and there was absoluting nothing that could be done to stop it. It was insane to think that we were trapped in the confines of our homes, that this pandemic was killing hundreds and thousands of people by the day, and that people decided that toilet paper was going to be what saved their lives. This was not your run of the mill type of virus and it was terrifying to think about. I’ve handled the flu virus, and the HIV virus is relatively avoidable in the majority of aspects but COVID-19 is airborne and that is simply terrifying. When this all started I was only sixteen, I hadn't a clue about life and life was just being thrown at my face. The monotony had driven the time faster and days turned to weeks and weeks turned into months as quickly as an hour turns to the next. Somehow within no time, my junior year had ended and I was now a senior. Oh to be a senior, to walk down the hallway and have the underclassmen clear the way, and to get out of school earlier because maybe I’d had a mod off, it sounded like a far off dream but I’d waited my three years and it had finally come just to be taken away. I had hoped and dreamed for the pandemic to somehow mysteriously disappear before the summer ended, and to be able to strut down the hallways knowing it would be the last time. Those hopes however were too high and I had to learn to be okay with that. Over time I began to learn a lot, I also experienced a lot. I came to find that highschool was going to be just a glimmer of the many things I was going to experience and it may be a huge thing now but in thirty years who's to say I’ll even remember it? I also found that it was important for me to start living for myself and doing what I wanted for myself rather than living for anyone else. Corona may have taken a lot but it didn’t take away my friends. I continued to build my friendships, went on vacations, and had many laughs and cries. In an empty, hopeless and dark world, my friends were the light. To Andrea, Sarah, Abby, Nina, Andy, and Kasia, thank you. I can’t say enough how much they have helped, not only this year and through this pandemic, but through every moment since I met them. There are so many things in this past year that I wish I could have changed, so many exaggerated saunters as a senior down the hallway, countless amounts of coffees in the mornings, and however theses missed opportunities will be missed both literally and figuratively, I couldn’t help but be thankful for every opportunity it opened myself up to. So while Corona may have hit me with a truck and dragged me thirty miles from where I was supposed to be, it still managed to call the ambulance for me to bring me to who I am today.