A letter from May 26th, 2020

Dear Future Samantha, I started this letter on May 25th, 2020, Memorial Day around 5:20 pm. I’m currently listening to Moth into Flame by Metallica and Bo and Miranda are making a slip-and-slide outside with Athena. I’m living through a pandemic. Ge'ez, I never thought I would say that sentence. You know what’s even crazier, it’s been 76 days since I’ve played soccer and it’s been 73 days since I drove to school. The best part is I’m only 17, a junior in high school. Honestly it feels like I am in cyber school this whole time. I still interact with my teachers but it feels like I’m only doing homework. Before this pandemic happened I wanted to do cyber school because my best friend does cyber school because of hockey and I'd miss the same amount of days of school that she did if not more. I was getting tired of being called down to the office because I've missed too many days of school because of soccer. After being through this pandemic, I'm happy I don't do cyber school because I need physical interaction and I realized that if I did cyber school I'd only talk to five people instead of talking to over 50 people. I can’t honestly say I missed a big event because of this pandemic. As a junior, I got extremely lucky because I can go to Prom next year and the graduation ceremony unlike the senior class this year. Unfortunately, I do miss out on traveling the country to play soccer. This year was crucial for me in my soccer career because I had the most potential to commit to a college where I plan on furthering my education and playing soccer for the college. Since soccer is a contact sport, I can’t play soccer during a pandemic. I haven't played soccer since mid-march and it has been difficult to deal with. Furthermore, I haven't been able to go visit colleges to see if I like the environment, the style, and distance to get to the college. Basically simple variables in deciding what college I want to go to if I can't play soccer. My experience with this pandemic has honestly been boring because I can't play soccer. This is the main reason it's boring for me because all I've done for the past 14 years is soccer. My life revolved and still revolves around soccer. I've never decided to play another competitive sport other than soccer. I was one of those few people who when I tried my first sport when I was three or four and I stuck with it. I never planned on playing a different sport ever let alone not being able to play it. I’ll admit, it's just been difficult to adjust. Yes I can still juggle or dribble the ball wherever and when I want but it’s not the same juggling and dribbling around people and having fun. I'm having the same problem with not being able to go to school. I need my alone time but at the same time being alone for two months is completely absurd to me. I need my social time. I need to see my friends. I need to interact with my friends. I need more than being on my phone FaceTiming or Snapchatting them. It's not the same and I honestly cannot wait until quarantine is basically over and I'm allowed to hang out with my friends safely without having a mask on my face. The only part I liked about this is not getting up at 5:30 every single morning. No matter how early I would go to sleep I would always dread getting up at 5:30. I couldn’t, and still can’t get myself to wake up that early without being cranky for the first two hours I’m awake or wanting to fall straight back to sleep. Other than that, I hate this (I can already hear mom saying, “Hate is a very strong word. Use “I strongly disliked this.” There is so much hate in the world you don’t need to add to it” but there is no other way for me to explain how dreadful this is for me.). There wasn't anything that surprised me about how my community or the public as a whole responded to this pandemic. I assumed people would take this seriously and do what they were told to do regardless if it were from private businesses or Tom Wolf mandating quarantine. I think a lot of people have listened to keep their distance from people for everybody's safety. I know what hasn't worked is how the governor's health people took care of this and how they were transforming nursing homes in the hospitals and that's where half if not more than half of the deaths in Pennsylvania came from. I also don't like how a lot of news websites have been only telling us half the truth about the numbers with how the States are opening up. There were many reporters saying, “It's too early! Majority of these states have increasing ***** rates, and they're opening up. The Governors are putting us in danger!” I know in Pennsylvania the counties with increasing ***** rates are not opening and it just irritates me that they are willing to edit information so it fits their “agenda”. If there was one thing I wished my community, my county, my state, and this nation could have done better in this pandemic it would’ve been to set aside our differences and stop pointing fingers at each other for one moment, so we can get through this together. Like I said earlier, there is so much hate in this world right now, regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, etc. We have so many people trying to spread “hope and justice” for people right now when in reality they are spreading fear and prejudice. I think we as a nation need to drop our Vendettas against each other just for one moment, so we can get through this pandemic and not have any setbacks, so we can get back to a similar life like we knew a few months ago. This pandemic has taught me a lot of things about myself. One thing it's taught me is that it takes a lot for something to break me down mentally, emotionally, and physically. Being isolated with my family and not seeing anybody else has done a number on me. There are some days when I am doing well and then there are other days around the exact opposite. I'll be very happy and productive one day and then the next day I could potentially just cry in my bed the whole day. I don't think I've developed depression because of this would happen to me during school but that was from being stressed about taking three tests in one day or if I was worrying about how many days of school I was going to miss because of soccer. I have no idea why this happens is a whole problem. When this does happen I still feel in control but at the same time I can't stop what's happening. I have no idea what it is. I don't think it's something so drastic that I have to see a psychologist. I don't think it's split personalities because I don't have names for the certain personalities that happen and it isn't bipolar because it's just more than two moods it happens with every single mood. It's probably just extreme mood swings 24/7 but I honestly have no idea what it is. I also don't want to say I have all this stuff because I just googled and that's what everybody says that they have that took AP Psychology. (I know you can't tell from the letter because I'm typing lol but it just happened. I was in a good mood. I was being productive and then mom barges in and tells me that we can't recycle the TV's tomorrow because Dad has to do something with the truck and then she leaves my door wide open. She doesn’t even try to close it and it really bugs me. My mood just went from being happy and productive to being mad at mom for not shutting my door and not wanting to do this letter anymore. So I'm typing angrily for about a minute and then Fender comes in and sits on my lap and I'm calm again. I just went through 3 moods in a matter of a minute and I have no idea if that's normal or not haha.) If this pandemic continues on for another month I really don't know what I'm going to do with myself because at this point. As now right now, if I see one of my friends I literally might have a mental breakdown just because I miss them so much. (I'm currently crying typing this because I miss them so much. Actually no, I'm not even typing this. I'm just using Voice on Google Docs to type what I'm saying because I know I can't type anymore without ruining my computer because I'm crying so much.) I honestly don't know how to challenge myself to grow as an adult during this time because everybody is telling me to be strong during this, it'll be over soon, or it could be worse. None of this advice is helping. I’ve barely left my house since March and I don't know what to do anymore. I've tried to keep bullet journals/diaries of what's been going on and it’s not working because I don't have anything to write in it. It's the same thing over and over again and I don't feel the need to write “I woke up”, “I ate”, “I exercised”, “I did work”, “I went to sleep” for as long as this pandemic is going to go on for. I guess if there's one thing I need to work on is to figure out a way to be more spontaneous with how I live my life is because I don't know how much longer I can deal with doing the same thing over and over again. At least when I was at school I never knew what was going to happen during my classes because there was never a dull moment in my classes regardless of the class. It could have been Mrs. Cotton scaring us with Pennywise because we don’t know our prerequisites well enough or my AP chemistry class almost ******* everyone in the school because somebody started heating hydrochloric acid. I feel like I just I needed to stay more positive through this whole thing and just know that this will end at some point and just look forward to the point where I can play soccer again without being scared that I'm going to get sick and die and being able to see my friends at school with not at risk of getting Corona. Gosh, where do I see myself in 5 years? Well, I'll be a senior in college. That's kind of scary to me to think about because I'm still only a junior in high school. I hope I'm still playing soccer. That my Century team has finally started their College travel team going so I can come back in the spring and play with my old teammates. Hopefully I’ll be graduating with some type of bachelor's degree regardless of its biochemistry, biology, chemistry business, psychology, etc. I really don't know at this point because I mainly want to go for a major in something where I can deal with athletes 24/7 but not be an athletic trainer because they do not get paid much. There's so many classes I want to take but I'm not sure if I can take them all. I want to be doing something in Sports Medicine but I don't know if I want to be the person that does the surgeries. I would love to be somebody that does all the research for it but I don't want to be doing it by myself I want to put myself in the position where I can do all this but not be in a ton of debt but still make enough money to sustain myself. I also want to travel the world. I really don't know where I want to live because I really don't want to go north but I really don't want to go south or east or west but I don't want to stay here if you know what I mean. I'll be filling my time doing the same thing that I've always been doing for the past fourteen years, hopefully still playing soccer and there's not a dramatic injury that I have to deal with other than my problems with my hip lol. I will surround myself with the people that I've always surrounded myself with; my friends and family. I know there's a good chance I'll possibly not be near my family at all whatsoever so I want to make friends who I feel are my family. I hope I become that type of person where if anybody needs anything that I'll be able to help them no matter what it is. I hope I'm still a selfless person that I am today. I hope that I don't become blinded by everybody else's opinion by me and that I know my self-worth. I think some steps that I can take over the next five years to make everything I said attainable is to surround myself with people. Only want to see the best for me and not try to drag me down because they see my potential. I want to be done with people who say that they want the best for me but in reality they just want the best for them because of me. I’m finishing this letter on May 26, 2020 around 7:10pm. I went fishing today near Lake Erie and I didn’t catch anything. Don’t feel bad for me because dad and andrew didn’t catch anything either. Miranda caught a fish on her second cast and Bo caught one because the hook got stuck in a fish’s chin instead of it’s mouth. I hope the future treats us well! “Don’t do anything I would do and definitely don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” Sincerely, 2020 Corona Pandemic Sam (Junior)