Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photos: Getty Images At the start of the year, I got a little planner, optimistic that another pandemic year would not fall to absolute shit. On the front cover, a cartoon brown woman in sunglasses stood in as my aspirational, most exceptional self, and by the end of 2021, I would be her. I ordered my plans for the coming months into neat, manageable, manifestation-fraught boxes, and at first, it assuaged my anxiety.
Bindu: I finished up my last semester of grad school, which was difficult. I think the sudden stress of the pandemic and going online made me lose a lot of motivation. Professors would encourage us to use the extra time we had to work on our projects, but I’d never felt so drained. Then I was unemployed for a while — that financial situation cemented my homeward-boundness.
Olivia: It’s hard, though, because I definitely didn’t think I’d be here this long, as happy and appreciative as I am that I have somewhere to go. Olivia: I don’t think I have. I judge myself more than anyone else. I thought I’d gotten past a point where I would ever need to move back home with my parents, what with my career and being more settled into adulthood in New York City. It’s more of a blow to the ego. But I’m sorry that you have; that sucks and is so uncalled for. It’s a pandemic! How do you deal with it?
Olivia: I think it’s easy now to forget what it was like in those early days of the pandemic, especially in New York City, when things just completely shut down and we weren’t sure what COVID-19 was or how it was transmitted. I remember sitting in my room one day, with the window open, thinking, “Is COVID coming into my room right now just with the breeze?” Back then, it felt like you had to barricade yourself in your apartment. That was lonely and isolating, and scary.
Olivia: It’s tough because I know that people have it way worse. I’m extremely lucky. No one very close to me has died, and very few have been sick. I can’t imagine what that would be like, so there’s a layer of guilt: Who am I to complain? But it’s not healthy to think that way, so I try not to be too hard on myself. I wonder: You mentioned wanting to feel like a Brontë.
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