A letter from June 3rd, 2020

Dear future Jack, It’s been five years since I’ve written this, so fill me in! Hopefully, you're a sophomore in college. As I’m writing this, quarantine is slowly starting to end and I’m at Cameron's house. this whole quarantine has been absolutely insane and COVID-19 has really impacted everyone’s life. I think it’s changing us all for the better but it’s honestly really hard to tell when you’re living in the moment. Something that’s going on with me in quarantine, is losing some weight. Surprisingly, I don’t feel better about myself and I’m not doing too well but I think with lots of time in some mental healing I think Jack five years in the future could tell me how that impacted me very specifically. It's scary, or at least getting help is scary and I'm proud of myself for doing so. Sometimes we face really difficult obstacles that you have to learn to jump over. I'm sure in these next 5 years you'll have your fair share of challenges and problems but you'll get through them like anything else. I promise. It’s been very hard for me, and I think this is pretty life changing. This has also made me realize how much I appreciate spending time with friends, I missed them so much!! Yesterday I saw Rowan and Paul for the first time in months and it was pretty snazzy. I’ve only recently been able to hang out with friends, and school’s starting to wrap up. my grades have pretty much ”tanked” as Mr Thompson says this quarantine. It’s definitely from my lack of motivation or genuine interest in school, but this assignment is certainly something I did have motivation to do. I'm not too sad about school ending early, just because I’m still a freshman in high school and I know I still have three more years of that place. For most of quarantine I’ve been hiking with Dad several miles every day and it was really fun but recently we’ve kind of stopped. How do you think quarantine shaped you? Do you think it made you more appreciative friends? Going in public? I know right now, the simplicity of just going out to eat at a restaurant and going to the mall seems so far out of reach but something I would honestly love to do. When did things become normal again? when would you say life “returned back to normal”? Anyways, I hope this caught at a pretty good time, and I hope all is well:) Love, you in freshman year highschool of highschool