Being An Essential Worker During Quarantine 

The world seems to be falling apart right in front of our eyes and there is nothing that we can do. The Earth keeps spinning around on its axis, time does not stay still, and we cannot either. 

There are people who had to face going outside of their homes because the world itself could not completely shut down. We as a human race could not shut down. Some did. That had to have been the scariest part of it all. 

We come out of the house, see others who are just as scared, fear every time a person sneezes, cannot even remember what faces look like without a mask. We were told that we would be back to 'normal' or a version thereof. 

It all shattered in a minute. 

In the blink of an eye, snap of the fingers, gone in a flash (all of those references). 

It all applies here. I look around at a world I no longer recognize and all I feel is heartbreak. I see people wanting the world to be a normal thing. It will never be normal again. We have seen too much, felt too much to go back to a world that doesn't remember what devastating affect it has. 

They did not see the barren streets in the middle of the day. They did not get to feel the rush of the car in what would have been normal traffic hours, made somber by the fact that there was no one else on the street with it. Litter crossed the road more frequently than life. 

It felt as if all the world was collectively holding a breath. 

They did not see the fear of someone if you were 10 feet away without a mask no one else near you. They did not see all of the grocery stores wiped out and rationing. They did not fear that they might not get food or water for a while. 

They did not hear the yelling, the fear over the phone as you talk to people who are even to afraid to leave the house for anything. 

They did not see the barren parking lots. No cars in sight for miles, the building themselves looking darker, haunted. They did not see a girl in a parking lot crying because she knew that this was not the world that children should grow up in. 

She cried for her uncertain future. She cried for her family who are all older than her with health problems. She cried for the children who she came to love at her last job. She cried for the state of the world. 

After the cry, she shook herself awake. She turned her car on and drove to a job that was needed. 

She found solace in workers who were like her. They did not know what was going on but they saw first-hand the effects. There was a period of time where we all feared that we would be the next victim of the pandemic. 

We kept coming back. 

We came to work. We did our hours, we asked for more. We were scared, but we knew the world was still turning. We faced the fear of inevitability to see the security of a future that seems to stretch farther and farther away from us.

We still have a hope for a better world and a better life for those around us. We will get through this and only come out stronger.