Before quarantine started I wasn’t very content with my life and I was very confused about my purpose in life. I wasn’t interested in anything other than “fun.” All I wanted to do was have fun and I see nothing wrong with that. But there came a point in my life where I started to become extremely depressed because I wasn’t taking care of my body or my mental health. I was so focused on the the “me” that I let everyone see, that I forgot who I was. I was basically chasing after a mirage and an illusion of who I could’ve been and I didn’t turn around to see the broken pieces of me that I left behind. I was so desperate to change myself because I felt like I wasn’t enough, I felt like everything I did and everything I strived for would disappear the moment I grasp it even for a second. My mental instability started to show physically over time and I couldn’t hide it anymore. I didn’t feel motivated to do anything. Even waking up in the morning made me feel like I was a living corpse. I would cuss a lot and use meaningless terms to try and hide how much I was struggling internally. I would push people away from me because I thought that it was better for me to push them away before they decided to leave me after finding out that the “friend” they had was fake.

Distance learning was very exciting at first because it was a pretty big change for me. I liked that I could do all my homework at my own pace and I really enjoyed distance learning because it gave me time to think over myself. I’ve been thinking about how I behaved for the past three to four years and I’ve been thinking about the future. I’m much better now than I was before because I’ve decided to just “live.” When I look back through my memories, the person I “was” is like a stranger compared to who I am now but at the end of the day, my past and my present are both “me.” I can’t deny my past because it led me to my present. I haven’t really changed drastically but everyone around me has told me that I seem much happier and I’m more giddy than I was before. I don’t really know what the future has in store for me but instead of running away from my problems like I used to, I’ll try to face them head on. I was afraid of making mistakes before but now I’m okay with it because mistakes aren’t scary, they’re blessings in disguise.

I loved distance learning and my experience with it was amazing overall. I got a good amount of sleep and I got most of my work completed. I haven’t been procrastinating at all either because if I don’t do homework, I really have nothing else to do other than chores. Distance Learning has reignited my passion for learning, without homework and something to do, quarantine would’ve been pretty boring for me. The only thing that really bothered me was that some of my classes would assign multiple projects that had to be done within one week and it was very hard for me to finish all of them without pulling at least one all-nighter.

A painting that I relate to a lot is called “The Frozen Watches of Space Time” by Salvador Dali.

This painting is very special to me because there’s so many different ways to interpret it. Even though this painting is about time, I think that it’s also about life in a way. The clock is very irregular and it’s not perfect, yet it doesn’t have an end and it doesn’t cut off anywhere because it isn’t a line. There isn’t a start or end on this clock. Because it is irregular and not a perfect circle, I assume that it is like life. It’s like an infinite cycle of ups and downs just like life. The number 8 on this clock also resembles the infinite sign too and right next to it is a dead tree. I think this represents an infinite cycle of death and rebirth. The shape of the clock itself looks like an irregular road towards nowhere. This painting made me think of how fragile life is and it made me think of my own life. It feels so surreal to think that I am “alive.” After looking at this painting, I actually feel honored to be alive, I feel like I have a long road ahead of me, but all I can do is keep walking. Time doesn’t flow backwards and it’s priceless, I can’t buy more time and I can’t buy back the time that I’ve already lost. This basically means that all the mistakes I’ve made in the past can’t be changed, I can’t go back in time and just “change the past,” what has happened has already happened and all I can do is continue walking towards my future. I can’t change what has already happened so I will learn from my failure’s in the past to forge a brighter future for myself so that I don’t repeat the same mistakes again. Even after I die, time will still flow. It’s infinite.