Living in the city and in the village during the pandemic

2020, a new year, a new decade, new opportunities, and hopes for me as a student. However, the whole world changed during this year, and all my hopes were crushed. We went into a world pandemic and we were stuck inside our houses. Now, imagine having the chance to choose where you want to live during the pandemic. Choosing between a city and a village, who would you choose? I would choose to live in a village, and I will tell you the reasons why would I.

This whole pandemic for us started in March, and at that time I was living alone in Pristina, because of my studies. When I first heard the news about the quarantine, it did not come as a shock to me, because I, as an introvert, was used to staying inside and not going out. At that moment, I had everything that I wanted, a TV, my laptop, my phone, all the books that I wanted to read and, the most important one, quietness. That panic I saw in the eyes of my neighbors, I could not find it in mine. At that time, as selfish as I may sound, I did not care about other people and what was happening because I believed people were panicking without any reason and that they should try to calm down and look at the bright side of all of this, which is that we have more free time, that we could use it to do something that we have never done before.

I thought the quarantine will be only for a couple of weeks and, that they would go very quickly, and everything will go back to normal. Well, as you all know, I thought wrong. The quarantine was not just a couple of weeks, it extended into months, and being stuck in my apartment and doing the same things days after days bored me to death. During those days, I understood that loneliness can ruin you and that in fact, I did not have everything I wanted, which was my family. That is why I decided to go to the village where my family was.

When I went there, it felt like a different world. I could not feel that we were in a pandemic. Yes, we were socially distancing but we were used to that because we rarely met other people. My village has fewer people than the others, and we could easily and fearlessly take a walk in the mountains that were around our houses. Those walks became like a routine for me. While taking a walk every day, it felt more like a holiday that we did not expect than a pandemic. This was one of the reasons I loved living there, I felt stress-free and during those walks, I meditated and I felt calm. That was the only time I could get away from those bad news that were devastating for all of us.

The loneliness and all the suffocation I felt while I was in Pristina, went away because there I had people I could rely on, I had my family. My family during the pandemic was my source of happiness and comfort. Since I was born I was not used to expressing my feelings to anyone even to my family, I was always scared to say anything about myself because I kept thinking how their opinion about me would be, however, this changed during the pandemic. Not having other places to get away and because we were always together made it possible for me to understand my family more and they also understood me. I can easily talk with them and we felt each-others sadness, happiness, and pain, this made me feel more comfortable and happy.

We are still living in this world pandemic, but I am taking things easy and enjoying every single moment possible. I do feel different in these different places that I am living and I came to the conclusion that it was not because of the place but because of the people that I was spending the time with. I feel better and happier in the village because next to me I have my family, people I can talk to, who will not make me feel lonely.