Personal Essay

 Life in the midst of a pandemic

Coronavirus, as was detected in late 2019 originated in Wuhan, China. At first, it was considered an isolated case since it only hit a certain city in China. But as weeks went by, the virus spread vigorously to entire China, then throughout the world. First-quarter of 2020 COVID-19 first case in the Philippines was detected in Manila. People including myself didn’t take the news seriously. But hearing the news on TV and the government was doing contact tracing and found symptoms of this virus among the contacts, I already find it alarming.

Scientists worldwide never stopped inventing cures and vaccines to stop the spread of the virus and thus to protect the people. True enough, months later vaccines were made for us. Covid vaccines were made accessible to each of us, to different age groups. And true enough, these vaccines really do save lives.

I could remember right after my 5th-grade 4th quarterly exam, the government raised the alert level for the entire country. Isolating everyone and letting all of us stay inside our houses to avoid contact with people during those times, we couldn’t really know for sure if a person is a virus carrier. Malls were closed, schools were empty, people put on some face masks and face shields, and streets that used to be busy and noisy were already empty and silent.

For me those days were one of the hardest, knowing all my friends and some special people won’t see each other often or possibly the thought of never seeing each other anymore. Those were the days when I felt alone but nice, being away from friends for a while, no contact with any friends didn’t really matter in the situation called “left out from friends”. Even though being in that kind of situation and my decision didn’t bother me during those days, it did bother me how the future should look like considering what is happening now in the present. The idea of growing apart from each other was a bit unforeseen. That, we weren’t ready for that. Although through those two years we created new friendships and relationships that keep us going in our lives with this new life we sort of decided in order to adapt.

Today, living in a better and new normal, and living with all the situations happening made us realize how precious our life is. How we are surviving every day -- one by one each day, how important are our family, friends, and all the people we care for and love. And how thankful through ups and downs we are here today still fighting.