The expectation that my first step on campus this fall would declaw the kindred estrangement that had latched onto me since 2020 was one I should never have set. For the second year in a row, I was late to my first class of the semester. At least the unreliability of public transportation was a familiar constant. I arrived 15 minutes into the psychology lecture and was forced to crawl over the stuffed backpacks of first-year students to find a seat in the massive auditorium filled to the brim with hundreds of faces—a stark contrast to the complete anonymity of last year, when everyone’s yawns were concealed by thick fabric that had become a second skin. I hadn’t realized just how deserted the campus had been last fall, until it had seemingly transformed into Times Square over the summer. I’d become so accustomed to desolate hallways in my senior year of high school that I’d become ignorant of its characteristic hustle and bustle. I wondered if the first-years—the first wave of students to have had a proper high school graduation in two years—could conceive that I got lost on my first day of university because orientation was online when I was their age and I was no longer familiar with the imminence of in-person classes. I wondered how I could ever be whole again after a global overturning severed my life in two, split me open, and unravelled my insides. I wondered how I could grow if all my formative memories were from a time when the world was an entirely different place—one that no longer existed. And I wondered why everyone around me seemed to believe it still did.
The Thursday before March Break of 2020 my English teacher asked our class for advice regarding whether she should cancel her family’s trip to Disney World now that “coronavirus” was becoming a household name. The replies were mixed, some echoing her concerns about being quarantined in the United States, others suggesting she go in case this were the last time in a while that she could travel outside the country. However, the prospect of our very own suburban school getting shut down over this hypothetical, distant danger was absurd to us—except for one guy in the class, who confidently claimed we wouldn’t be coming back after the March Break. We dismissed this allegation as being “too drastic,” yet that evening, my mother somberly announced all schools would be closing. The teenage prophet was nowhere to be seen on Friday.
Most of my teachers went about our last day as if it wasn’t about to become a historical date, reminding us that the flu was just as bad as this new virus. My biology teacher, who chose not to cover any new material, was the exception to this mindset. He had decided pulling out a textbook was futile because he was positive we wouldn’t see each other for at least a year. Instead, he taught us an Italian card game. It all seemed melodramatic at the time, but given we had just covered the unit about viruses before the one about animals “due to current circumstances,” I began to wonder if he was right. That evening, I booted up the PS4 I had received for Christmas, figuring that—if nothing else—I would have time to explore a fantastical land, from the comfort of my basement, while my parents were gone the grocery store for over two hours because the panic that we would soon grow numb to had only just set in. I had just turned 16 at the time. I was coming off the high of directing my first short film, sinking back into an untreated depression that I quietly knew would not be helped by isolation—but I had no clue just how much it would worsen, especially now that I would be stuck 24/7 with parents who didn’t believe a teenager could be having a quarter life crisis.
Ironically, I stopped wearing a metaphorical mask during the quarantine that lasted two weeks, then three weeks, then six months, as. I didn’t have to perform an identity for my classmates anymore. For as long as I can remember, I had been muting myself to please my friends even though I never seemed to be enough for them. In the confines of the four walls of my room, I didn’t have to pretend to have a crush on a guy I would haphazardly select from our grade to fit in with my friends who were already anxious about finding a date for prom while I had been repressing my sexuality for ages, paranoid they suspected me of lesbianism at our French Catholic school. Instead, I found solace in online communities where I could rave about my interests without being ridiculed for them in the cafeteria at lunch because I couldn’t fathom what other people thought about in their free time. Online, I didn’t have to face judgemental stares at my fidgeting and panic attacks. But it was also incredibly isolating for my only safety to be found in the phone that my parents would regularly confiscate, convinced technology was the cause of my depression. I regularly forgot the outside world existed. I pulled away from old friend groups because I had finally realized I might be better off without their diatribes, but also because they made me aware that my slew of neglected mental health problems was burdensome for them to see. I became friends with the five a.m. glow of the sky, unable to sleep because I knew that if I did I would have to wake up to yet another day of hazy disappointment.
As soon as schools reopened in September 2020, I relapsed into old habits of keeping suffocating company because it was the only constant I knew in my life. During my senior year, all my friend groups, old and new, imploded. Some quietly, and others very dramatically. I went through my first relationship and what I hoped would be my last all in the span of a week. The year I anticipated would be like a coming-of-age film went from a disaster movie to a soap opera that had no series finale in sight, despite being a dozen seasons too long. I emailed my English teacher, venting the grievances my parents discredited after I had flipped through the grainy, decade-old pictures populating my pink DSi’s photo gallery, crying over how the girl looking at me through the screen could never have predicted she wouldn’t have the opportunity to wear a prom dress like the ones she had been drawing. I wanted closure more than anything; some confirmation I could move onto the next stage of my life instead of my childhood and adulthood blurring together in a muddled, premature growth spurt.
And now, in my psychology class, I found myself steeped in jealousy for the sea of first-year students that populated the massive, foreign auditorium. I’m ashamed of the juvenile envy that knots my insides, and yet I can’t shake my resentment of the fact that they had a normal senior year, and I didn’t. We were told our sacrifices would be worth it because we would get a normal first year of university, unlike the class of 2020, though, that ended up being a lie. I still cry when I think of how they got to walk across a stage of applause to collect their diplomas, whereas I sat in my living room watching a malfunctioning PowerPoint livestream on my television. Sometimes I bite my lip so hard it bleeds when I wonder if they know how good they have it. That they are actually experiencing university. That they might actually transition from being teenagers to being adults thanks to these rituals I was denied—and yet, I am happy for them. I am bitterly happy that they are the first wave of students in two years to complete a proper transition, because all I can hope for is that they might be slightly more prepared for the challenges ahead. Without these ceremonies, it’s as if I was cryogenized at 16 years old while simultaneously being totally disconnected from that version of myself. I’m sure Freud would’ve loved me. I would never wish this disorientation on anyone.
My face mask marked me as a minority among the hundreds of uncovered faces, rendering it hard to believe there was ever a time when we would get reprimanded for standing too close to our friends because we were trying to have a conversation without constantly needing to repeat ourselves through thick fabric—but all these protocols had dissipated over the summer. This first day of school was overwhelmingly conventional, and I was left wondering why there was a gaping cavity in my stomach at all times when there were barely any imprints of this pandemic left. After chopping the hair I hid behind for 17 years, going to the university I never expected to attend, getting a driver’s license, and hitting the legal drinking age, I am virtually unrecognizable from the person I was when we were naïve enough to think quarantine would be nothing more than an extended March Break. I often lay awake in my room, which I rearranged to escape its overbearing intimacy, questioning if the last two years even happened, if there had ever been a time when my hair was long enough to collect the cobwebs of old friendships.
For two years, I expected I would be overjoyed when life finally made sense again, but I could never have predicted that after the last two hellish years, I would be craving the familiar state of limbo between real life and the alternate, sterile reality that reeked of the clinical tang of hand sanitizer. At times, I catch myself dubbing the latter a “fake life,” but I keep trying to remind myself that there really was a time when the word “mask” was connoted with Halloween and not a horror movie come to life. How do you reconcile two parts of yourself? Was I shrouded in the darkness of my own mind for too long to avoid growing sideways?
The amphitheatre reanimated itself at the professor’s dismissal, and a flurry of students barrelled down the stairs, keen to be anywhere but here. Last year, I could bolt down the sidewalk to catch the bus, but that proved problematic with the swarm of students now populating the pavement. I was less than 10 meters away from the platform when the bus left me in the dust. But it’s okay. I’ll just wait for the next one. I’ve got time.
Maya Meloche is currently completing a major in Film Studies with a minor in English. If they aren’t spending time with their cat, they’re probably watching a movie, or watching a movie with their cat. Maya’s passion for writing goes back to dictating stories for her mother to type on an old laptop in the late 2000s and writing fantastical stories concocted from the boredom of after-school programs in the suburbs. In 2019, Maya and their high school friends’ short film was screened at the DIGI 60 film festival in Ottawa. Maya aims to work as a screenwriter someday.
