“You are being called to sit on the couch! Our grandparents were called to war! Stay inside!” “Anne Frank spent years in a tiny attic, and she didn’t even have Netflix! Don’t complain!” Anyone else sick of seeing things like this? I get it. We have it easier than some situations from back then, but that doesn’t mean we need to stay positive at all times and stop worrying about what’s going on. Things are crucial, we’re not used to it and it’s okay to be panicking right now. Of course, we should be grateful that our job is to just stay inside to help everyone out, but just because I’m not risking my life in war, it means I am somehow a bad person for being upset or complaining. 

I think that we should all be upset and nervous. Our lives really have changed in just a couple of days, and it’s absolutely okay to question things and worry. Especially if you have anxiety, depression, ADD, etc., this time is most definitely scary to you right now. You can’t see your friends when you really need to, you can’t hug anyone, you can’t go escape to a coffee shop or a morning run at the gym, you can’t go to all the concerts and gatherings you’ve been looking forward to. It’s okay to say it. It sucks. It’s life.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m extremely grateful for everything that I have in my life. Things really didn’t change a lot for me since I’m able to work from home, but my anxiety has been really bad especially at night (since I live alone there) that I had to leave LA and go stay with my family in NY— yes, the worst state of cases in the whole world. I’ve been social-distancing since and have managed to stay positive in the last few weeks. In the beginning, I freaked myself out so much by reading scary articles. One day I came across this one positive post about how many people actually recovered and I fully stopped looking at news articles, limited my time to social media and focused on the positives. Also, being around loved ones really has helped me get my mind off of everything that’s going on.

Not really sure where I’m going with this whole post, but just the fact that I want to let everyone know, don’t let anyone tell you not to be scared during these times or to “just get over it.” We all deal with things differently, especially a pandemic, something none of us has lived to experience. Anyways, it’s been helpful to remind myself that feeling scared and negative about this situation is in no way a failure let alone some kind of subconscious disrespect to our grandparents. It’s absolutely okay. Go cry it out!