Finding Myself In Isolation

Like most university students, I enjoyed the first week of isolation social distancing. After just a few weeks of coming back and dealing with toxic people, not sleeping due to assignments, and killer lecturers, I felt some sort of happiness that I wouldn't have to handle most of that until the end of semester. I started losing my mind around the third week. Online classes had me lose most of my focus and I found myself spiralling into a deep pit of depression that I haven't fallen into since the end of last year. I felt useless as I had four mental breakdowns in one day, my habit of self-harm came back, and it didn't help that the economical state of the world was crashing more and more each day as the cure to this virus was yet to be found.

I was a mess, being forced to revert to a potato-couch lifestyle inside from a high-paced campus life took a huge toll on my mental health. The toxic people around me who caused me to hold my head up higher. The lecturers who pushed me to be the person I wasn't. The seniors who forced me to share their ideologies. All that snark and cynicalness. The one that had affected me above all and dragged me down into that pit of power. I was a changed person because of them, a person whom I always wanted to be but in a worse way than anyone had ever expected. Suddenly all of those influences was gone from my life.

It was like a forced detox for me, as I found myself slowly slipping back to the person I was before university.

The one people said I had lost to a fierce version of me.

The one who still had high hopes who had been replaced with a pecimistic realist.

The one who hadn't flung empathy out a window who had traded places with someone who cared only for herself and those who could help her get to places

The one who saw the best in people instead of the one who would find their weaknesses and tear them apart from there.

The one who would light up at every mention of Star Wars and Harry Potter instead of bullying those in too deep in fandoms.

The one who wanted to help the world and make it a better place by the right things instead of using methods that would be illegal in a large and public scale for her own gain.

The one who was happy with who she was without giving a fuck about what other people think instead of the one who tried to be the person everyone wants her to be.

I started slowly, by watching a few Star Wars movies, rereading Harry Potter. A sense of relief washed over me as I felt that massive pressure I carried around slowly slip away as I lost myself in the words and screen. I was a high-strung person in university, who worked so hard to get the positions she wants, who would cheat, manipulate, and lie just to see the people she hates fall. I relied on nepotism and bribery to get to where I wanted. I considered pro bono cases cheap and meaningless as I felt myself rise above everyone else. I lost friends along the way, with them not liking the new me. They said I changed too much, hated the person that I became. A more confident and sadistic version who would have eaten the old version alive.

Most of all, I hated the old me. The one who I always saw as weak and unreliable. Who would rather get stepped on like a worm than fight back. The one who was naive and too idealistic for her own good. She was soft and the world's biggest loser.

I hated her.

This quarantine is slowly stripping myself from this new version of me. I felt myself reverting back to the character everyone found endearing as my old ideologies and principles came back. By distancing myself from that life and all those judgemental and toxic people, I'm growing back to the person I was. I've reached the point of clarity where I decided that maybe taking up a job in literature would be the best move for me, instead of a high-paying job in legal because it's what made me happy. I found my old dreams to become an author, an editor, someone who worked in publishing.

The person who loved herself despite having little friends and no name.

It's crazy to say that I found myself in this isolation, but I did.