When Covid hit i was 17, i’m italian and we had it pretty rough. After the lockdown i was left with anxiety problems i never suffered before. The last year of high school was like a fever dream, we would do like 2 weeks of school in person and 2 online and the rules changed constantly. Social interactions as i knew them before, in school and outside, changed and became more difficult. The fact that you lose a lot of friends due to everyone going to different cities to study for university didnt help either, i was basically alone for the first time in my life.
To cut it short, with highs and lows, i feel sometimes like i’m not supposed to deal with grown-up problems. Like i missed part of my life. I mean, when you enter high school youre basically still a kid and the years where you kinda are more mature are the exact ones i spent dealing with covid and its consequences. Could be because the first high school years were under my expectations and i counted on the last ones to give my youth a turn, and that’s why i feel i got robbed but idk.
In general its like i arrived where i currently am (last years of uni, then who knows maybe i’ll have to start working) too much fast. Like i speeded all my way in some of the best years of my life. Maybe its not totally because of covid but still, it feels like i found myself at a point far too close to the end of my youth (i mean the moment you still study and are much more free than when you will be working) and looking back i struggle to see how i ended up here.
Just a thought i had for some time, curious to see if everyone feel the same.
Wait til your 4th or 5th “once in a lifetime” event. It tends to speed up as you get older just like time does. My son had it pretty bad. He was in kindergarten that year and struggled with it. Got held back with a lot of other students and is still struggling to read. By the time it hit, I was already jaded and ready for the collapse that never came. And guess what? I was told I was “essential” and I had to keep going to work throughout. Don’t dwell on it, remember the things you learned, because your next “once in a lifetime” could be right around the corner.
In these times it feels we get a “once in a lifetime” event every other week hahaha. I guess one will become accustomed to that sooner or later.
We see it in our schools - babies who had only virtual visits and had delayed diagnoses, kids who have disabilities but didn’t get to do pre-k, kids who missed kindergarten, kids who didn’t get much middle school between elementary and high school, …
Yeah and he had ADHD the whole time on top of it.