A letter from May 23rd, 2020

Dear FutureMe, This year has definitely been crazy. I can’t really remember a lot of it because of everything that’s going on. At the beginning of the year I thought things were going to be weird because my friends had all left for college and I would be alone at school. I was wrong. It was weird without them, but I found new people to talk to and hang out with. My final season in Marching Band went really well and I was very excited to go to New York in May as well as the class trip and obviously, graduation. I was doing well in my classes and I was actually enjoying most of them. I did go through a few schedule changes before finding the right mix, however. My new found friends were making my life really easy and I had all this energy and passion for what I was doing at school. I was missing Meagan a lot, but it was made easier because for about two months I spent every Tuesday and/or Saturday at her house with her family. We watched all the Star Wars movies, a lot of the MCU movies and even though my best friend was on the other side of the country, I still had my home away from home. We always joked about her brothers being my brothers but for the first time, it actually felt real. You probably know way more than you’d ever like to know about them but it’s okay because they needed a big sister and you needed little brothers. I’ll never know the feeling of watching those movies for the first time again. That house was a blessing in a way so I could get away from my own home. I don’t know how much you remember, but your senior year would have sucked without the Hatfield's. You would have spent every night going into Grandmothers room giving her the inhaler that we weren’t even sure was working. You would be stuck watching the same old crime shows that your parents watch and would never branch out from the same old routine. You never would have discovered that you could get Taco Bell without your parents knowing. The magic of crunch wraps and shredded chicken burritos at 10 PM would be wasted on you. Things at church were different too. A lot different. Suddenly you were the oldest, as in the actual oldest. Everyone of those kids were looking at us thinking that they wanted to be like us. You didn’t have the safety net of the older group anymore. I learned a lot of things about those kids that no one else might ever know. I hope I helped them create a community where they could talk to each other but I don’t think I’ll know that for a long time. I spent a lot of time at Christmas thinking about what I wanted to do after high school. I decided that Shippensburg was the place I needed to go. I hope I stuck to my plan of being an accountant otherwise I think I’ll feel pretty dumb. I spent a few months hearing my sister and mom talk for hours at a time on the phone about how much she hated her job in Toledo. I felt bad for her but at the same time, she took the job and she knew what she was getting into. The next thing I knew, she was quitting her job and moving home with her cat. I didn’t really know how that was going to work since my dad is allergic to cats but I was excited anyway. Unfortunately I wasn’t going to be able to help her move back because it would be tech week of my final musical at IHS. Cinderella was going to be amazing. Everyone was working so hard and we all loved the show. I don’t actually remember hearing about COVID-19, I just remember it being March and suddenly Italy was shut down and the toilet paper was gone. Everyone was talking about being away from school for a few weeks and if everyone didn’t pitch in and do their part, we’d be in school until July. I never thought it would be possible for my last day of normalcy to be Friday March 13. But I guess it makes sense. The day of bad luck would bring the worst luck of all. But it also sucked because all of my plans were gone. Everything was shut down and we were all being told about refunds and this weird new app called Zoom that everyone was using instead of facetime and Skype. And of course I was now forced to help my sister move home, because that was still happening. My aunt and uncle had to come that week to watch my grandma. A week after the news about the closed schools, I turned 18. My family was still in town so I was sleeping on the couch. My small house had seven people stuffed into it as well as a cat and a dog. My aunt and uncle eventually did leave but it’s still very crowded. Two months down the line and the only thing changing is people getting more reckless. People have decided that they’re bored with the idea of safety and are flocking to crowded areas. More than that, a lot of places are using phrasing that suggests COVID-19 was a one time thing and now things will be back to the way they were before this mess. I don’t think that will ever be true. I don’t think I’ll be able to look at someone coughing or sneezing the same ever again no matter what. But I guess when you’re reading this at some point you’ll know what really happened. I don’t even know for sure what’s going to happen tomorrow. Don’t be dumb, Me