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  2020-10-06

  Friendship During COVID

  Before I went to college, I always struggled with making friends. When I made my way to Arizona State University that all changed. I met beautiful people who had priorities beyond petty drama. They were passionate about the causes I were, cared about school and turned out to be amazingly good people. I was pleasantly surprised, and I embraced my new friends. They’ve been my rocks throughout all my ups and downs for the first 2 years of college. In March 2020, I was eating lunch in the dining hall with a friend I hadn’t seen in months. We got the notification that we were going to be doing “virtual learning” for the rest of the spring semester. I don’t think either of us knew what this would mean. We walked back to my apartment, and I left him with a box of disinfecting wipes before we said goodbye. Within the next few weeks I was living at home again, still paying rent on my apartment 2 hours away. I didn’t get to say goodbye to my friends, and I was all of a sudden trapped in my house with my mom and sister. I love them, but I didn’t think I would ever be spending that much time in that house ever again. If we fast forward to July, I ended up losing one of my friends to suicide. That was one of the most difficult thing I was supposed to go through. While it was of the saddest thing I’ve ever gone through, I ended up meeting a lot of people who knew him. My circle of friends grew by a lot, and I ended up becoming close to a lot of them. The picture I added is from my online birthday party. The pandemic meant that I wouldn’t be able to see anyone safely because a lot of people live on campus. But the party was actually great. We played games over Zoom, talked and laughed. It was the first time I felt normal in a while, and it was definitely the best birthday of my life (weirdly).