Day 82: To Dream A Nightmare Over
Day 82: June 16, 2020
Global Cases: 8, 251, 224; Deaths: 445, 188
Egypt Cases: 47, 856; Deaths: 1, 766
Doha Ge Wang
Multimedia Journalism Junior
I woke up today to the sound of my intolerable alarm ringing. I held up my phone, it read 10am. I stared at my ceiling until I put together a list of tasks that needed to be done by the end of the day. And with my calculations, I was supposed to set my alarm for 9 instead of 10 to get a head start.
Unfortunately, my realization didn’t change how I felt. I still wanted to squeeze in thirty more minutes of sleep. I felt a strong urge to brush off all my responsibilities by dozing off and escaping all my negative thoughts and feelings. By the time I was finally able to pull myself together and out of bed, it was already 10:45. Where did those forty-five minutes go you ask?
Well, they were completely devoted to my mind’s made-up scenarios.
One particular and unrealistic picture which I painted in my head, was one where this nightmare was finally over, and all our lives were back to normal. We are no longer living through a pandemic.
Wow, that’s definitely a sentence I never thought I’d say. How could I, a twenty-year-old college junior, be living through a pandemic? I’m still convinced that this is all a dream, and that I’ll soon wake up from it. I just hope that soon is soon enough.
You know, during those four months of quarantine, people have walked in and out of my life so much that I actually lost count of them. It’s funny how being stuck at home ended up giving me the most valuable lesson of all. The time I was gifted helped me differentiate between my real friends and the superficial ones. I realized that the correct way to measure someone’s importance to me, is not according to them or the amount of times they reach out or call.
For The Caravan‘s previous diary entries in Arabic and English go to our COVID-19 Special Coverage page.
No. It’s about the amount of time and energy that I’m willing to exert to stay in touch with that person. So, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that my circle keeps getting smaller and smaller by the day. It’s quite sad though. When you let go of a person, you not only get rid of them as a whole, you let go of their memories too. And the last thing that any of us need right now, is the destruction of relationships.
I find that the only proper way to deal with such a gloomy day, is to figure out a way to jot it down. So here I am. Jotting it down. The burn in my heart and the ache in my gut. I feel like I’ve been reliving the same exact day for four months now.
I feel suffocated and trapped. How am I supposed to make each day special so that I’m able to tell them apart? Any advice, diary?
