Okay for Now: My Experience in a Pandemic Post-Grad World
Graphic by Kathy Pham, Photo by Suzie Cavalier
Some of the best experiences of my life have come from some of the most heartbreaking moments of my life. However, every time I experience a gut-wrenching feeling of heartbreak, disappointment or frustration, I do not want to hear this fact. I do not want to hear that this moment of despair will evolve into my next great story. It never seems possible.
The last year and a half have been filled to the brim with anxiety, disappointment and heartbreak. I had to cut my semester abroad in London short, jumping on the next plane to take me home. I felt this sudden loss of an experience I had been planning for years.
Back when we all thought the pandemic would last a month or so, I still had hope. I lost my backpacking expedition, but maybe I could land a summer internship in D.C. like I always wanted. No one was hiring, everyone felt trapped, and now I know that was just an omen for the next year to come. The longer it lasted, however, the harder it was to hold onto hope. Weeks turned into months, months turned into a year, and I lost what was supposed to be the best year of my life.
Instead of a road trip, self-exploration, and a senior year of college, I had anti-maskers yelling at me, a summer of fights with my family members, who were unwillingly forced to spend nothing but time together in our house, and Zoom fatigue. This doesn’t even come close to the grief and despair people who lost jobs, family members, homes and stability have felt since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. However, I’m not one to compare losses of the pandemic because it does nothing but minimize feelings that very much need to be processed.
For the past four years at university, I had been working towards the rest of my life, which holds a lot more weight than the word ‘graduation.’ I had been working towards a bachelor’s degree, yes, but I was also working towards an entry-level job, a sense of accomplishment, a commencement speech that would make me cry, and a family bottomless brunch at Medium Rare. Even then, I wasn’t sure what would come after, but I was excited. I felt like I had endless opportunities rather than no opportunities at all. I was sure my hard work would eventually pay off. When graduation day finally came, it did not feel like that at all.
When I graduated in December, I sat on my couch wearing sweats and a college T-shirt. I didn’t buy a cap and gown because I had nowhere to wear it, so I put on my high school cap and gown. My parents airplayed the pre-recorded commencement proceedings onto our TV, we drank champagne and cuddled the dogs.
When the commencement speaker gave her speech, I started crying, but not the tears of joy I anticipated. I wasn’t moved. I was angry. I had gone to college with the determination to get out of my hometown, kickass and rule the world. Instead, I was in the exact same position I had been when I graduated high school four years earlier: On a couch in Pleasanton, California, broke, sad, and wearing a shitty blue cap and gown.
There is a lot of crap that occurred between that moment and the one I’m in now writing this. A sneak peak before I get into the really shitty bits: I am vaccinated, employed, still a little sad, but medicated. More importantly, my life does not seem to be falling apart at the same rate it used to.
Upon graduation, I returned to my apartment in D.C. and I started temping at a call center where my job was to listen to people who cannot pay their rent and help them apply for relief. The emotional toll this job took on me was beyond anything I have ever felt before. On top of feeling the grief of all I had lost in the pandemic, I spent 40 hours a week listening to the grief of others who could lose their homes on top of everything else. I never left the apartment. I collapsed in my bed drunk and sad every Friday when the week was finally over. I couldn’t sleep, I lost my appetite, and I felt completely hopeless. My roommate, who is also my best friend, even sat me down and said that she had never seen me so down and that if I didn’t quit my job by the end of the month, she would quit for me. Still, there never seemed like there was a positive alternative to break the cycle of endless negative effects from the pandemic.
After quitting my job, I scraped together enough to pay rent and feed myself by babysitting two kids all day, who were learning almost nothing in online elementary school. All my extra time was devoted to networking, applying to jobs and talking to my career advisor. I had some interviews, but nothing that came to fruition. Each rejection was another sword in my back until I felt the full weight of the ‘10 of Swords’ tarot card.
It took a while, but I got a job offer from an incredible organization after doing my interview on a playground during my babysitting shift. Now, I get to work every day to empower women and elect them to political office. I am socializing again, making plans, and everything seems like it could be heading back to a place of normalcy. But as everyone removes their masks and casually walks back into bars and malls, I can’t shake the trauma of the past year as easily.
I have seen so many different sides of what this pandemic did, from the people at risk of eviction to the people who have lost loved ones to the kids who just want to play with their friends again to the college grads who have absolutely no certainty about the future. I want to say that everything will be okay and we can all move forward, but it’s not that simple.
Before the pandemic, I was a constant overachiever. I planned my life to a ‘T’ and often worked myself to exhaustion. The pandemic showed me that no matter how hard I work, how far ahead I plan or how certain I am of my next move, the universe sometimes has different plans. Sometimes it knocks you on your ass and utterly devastates you. If we try hard enough, we can find moments of joy and accomplishment in the heartbreak. But most of the time, it just sucks.
I am learning to sit in the suck, the uncertainty, the heartbreak and the failure. This experience has reminded me that I am a human being and there is so much out of my control. It has forced me to be easier on myself and let myself be imperfect, confused, lost and lonely. I have realized that none of those things make me a failure; it makes me human. Eventually, I am sure, I can move on from the suck. Until then, Sour by Olivia Rodrigo will be on repeat, and that is what ‘okay’ looks like for now.
Written by Coralyn Maguigad
