I felt behind.

I was a very timid person even before all of this. I was not able to handle social situations that well so I would overthink everything. I wasn’t funny, I wasn’t cool, and I wasn’t popular. People knew me and I knew them but I wasn’t that important. I was worried I was going to make a bad joke. I was worried people were going to look at me weird. I thought to myself when looking at others, “how is he so funny?” and “how is he so cool?”

I knew that I was missing something but I didn’t know what it was. I was trying my hardest, but no matter what I always felt behind.

Then COVID hit. I realized that everyone is in the same place. I wasn’t behind anyone. In fact I felt as though I was ahead. I treated the time in quarantine as a time to better myself, to “catch up” to all those who I thought were ahead of me. I wanted to return as a new and improved person, someone that no one had seen before. I wanted to enjoy life the same way my popular peers did. I worked and worked until I got what I wanted.

The best part was when the 2021-2022 school year started, I was a completely different person. I was able to handle myself. I was able to make people laugh. I was able to form my own friend groups and not be the guy on the side. It’s because of COVID that I got this opportunity to better myself – in the end, the world had to stop for me to get ahead.