Reflecting on trauma, healing and personal meaning in the age of COVID-19

When I was a senior in high school, one of my classmates died by suicide just a few months before graduation. I remember walking to school with my best friend the day after it happened. As we made our way along the overpass, I looked down at all the cars speeding on through. “Shouldn’t everyone, just, like, stop?” I thought to myself.

I was 16 and it was the first time that my world had been seriously turned upside down, so in my brain, it didn’t make any sense that the rest of the world wasn’t stopping to grieve with me. Instead, the world just kept turning.

For the most part, our teachers and administrators were incredible; they had deep empathy for what my friends and I were going through. But nothing stopped. Tragedy on Tuesday, assignments due on Thursday. 

A month later, my high school held a ceremony to celebrate my recruitment to play college tennis. It felt weird to be celebrating anything. A month after that, we were going to our senior prom. And a month after that, we were graduating.

Three years later, my friends and I talk sometimes about the pressure we felt during those few months to just keep going. The pressure to return “back to normal” forced us to try and carry on way before we were ready to do so, and several of us only ended up realizing this six months or a year into college when we started getting flooded with memories, images and emotions that had gone unprocessed. 

I’ve learned a lot since then, but if I had to choose one piece of advice from my experience to convey to others, it would be to stop trying to transform unprecedented and traumatic moments in time into something other than what they are.

Today, we are in a global pandemic. The entire world has been turned upside down for real now, and our obsession with returning to “normal” is manifesting itself in the ugliest of ways.

In a lot of ways, my experience with COVID-19 has been a privileged one. My junior year of college was cut short. Being uprooted from New York and returning home to California was very sad and scary and exhausting, but I made it back. I was not impacted by any of the current travel restrictions, I had a stable home to return to, and both of my parents are employed in non-essential fields that permit work from home. I am not worried about where my next meal will come from, or whether we will be able to pay the rent. I am not the target of racist and xenophobic attacks on the street.

And yet, even with this privilege, I feel the weight of the situation every day – any empathetic person does. This pandemic is a global trauma.

So, when I see people in similar positions to me – whether that be peers, professors or strangers on the internet – trying to force normalcy, I would like to say that it is okay to just stop. 

Don’t listen to the people on social media yelling about how you’re not making the most of quarantine unless you’re learning languages and doing push-ups on the floor every day – you don’t need to “make the most” of a pandemic; when the world is on fire, your priority should be taking care of your mental and physical health as best as you can.

Start dialogues with college professors and administrators holding you to unreasonable deadlines and doing whatever they can to push the semester along and stay on schedule. Advocate for yourself if you are struggling with online learning, even if it means putting yourself out there in a scary way and admitting that you are not doing so well.

When I think back to the end of my senior year of high school, I don’t think much at all about going to prom or graduating. I don’t think about my classwork, the grades I got or any of my accomplishments, really.

I think about the days when my friends and I would get away from all the noise and go sit at the beach or lay in the grass after school, talking and comforting each other through our delirious little reality. I think about the way we lifted each other up with gestures of kindness and love, and the way we made each other laugh when we needed it most.

Because when something happens that turns your world upside down, your humanity is all you have. Each of us holds inherent value that is not limited to our jobs, responsibilities and tasks. In the face of trauma and tragedy, do not lose yourself in the name of productivity – take time to nurture your soul, your heart, your creativity. Cherish your relationships, hold on to your humanity. When it’s all said and done, these are the things you’ll remember the most.

Odessa Stork is a junior with majors in philosophy and journalism. She serves as a Copy Chief for The Chronicle and is from Carpinteria, California.