Fear is our Worst Enemy

 When humans are obligated to stay in a 170 square ft apartment, many things start crossing their minds, personally I started reevaluating everything I had done, wondering if I had taken advantage of my last days outside, because I knew this was not going to be over any time soon. I also started thinking about my relationship with my family, the people whom I was stuck inside with from now on. The last day of my senior year was nothing like what I had imagined for the last 14 years, one of my biggest longings was walking down the aisle, shaking hands and receiving that long desired diploma.

August 13, 2020. What seemed like a normal day of school, turned out to be the last day I would see many of my friends, teachers, and special people that worked at my school.

11:15am - all seniors were called to an emergency assembly.

1:00pm - our last school lunch.

1:05pm -  saying goodbye to my friends for the last time in what we all thought was gonna be only a period of 15 days.

1:30pm - everyone on their buses, ready to go home.

 

At the beginning there was panic, lots of panic. Fortunately, our president made very clear that we were indeed allowed to go grocery shopping, or else people would've gone crazy stocking up for months, like it happened in other countries. But panic persisted, maybe not in the streets but definitely inside our 170 sq ft apartment, where someone with OCD, a depressed high school senior and two frustrated musicians where trapped for the next six months.

 

What makes my experience with COVID unique is the fact that I have lived through the longest quarantine in the world. 170 days governed by fear. Why? Because both of my parents classify as vulnerable population to COVID, the fear of them dying in front of our eyes flooded our home since day one. 

One thing I learned from this experience is that fear can lead people to do the unthinkable to survive.

This is my mother, one of the people I have shared this 170 sq ft with. She won the spotlight on the fear entry because when I asked her what feeling described her experience during the pandemic, she said fear. Fear of her kids getting sick, fear of losing her parents to coronavirus, fear of dying herself. 

The Voice Behind the Blog

 

My name is Mariana Mesa Castillo, I am from Bogotá, Colombia and I have been quarantined for almost 200 days. 

I am currently a freshman at the University of Kentucky, which means I was part of the class of 2020, the ones who were born around 9/11 and graduated high school in the middle of a pandemic through zoom.

 

Maybe saying my situation with the pandemic has been worse than other people's is selfish, due to the fact that I have an apartment where to sleep, food and my family has managed to stay together. But these months have been significantly hard for my family and our mental health.

But let's go back to where it all started; our president declared mandatory lockdown on March 14, 2020, when the country had around 10 cases. At the beginning, everyone thought it was the best call, but as days became weeks and weeks became months we realized the virus wasn't going away and being locked up was only prolonging the pandemic's peak. The only thing we accomplished by being on lockdown since March, other than causing our economy to almost fully collapse, was beating the record for the longest quarantine in the world.

This is Bogotá, the city I was born and raised in. It also happens to be Colombia's capital. With around eleven million people. we have had the most COVID cases in the entire country.