Ari's Story
Lately, I keep catching myself doing things unconsciously - things that are familiar, comforting, and inviting. Things that I’ve desperately tried to ignore. I’d brush my teeth and accidentally drop the toothpaste tube on the ground, because the invisible space of the metal counter of the castle bathroom mirror was still too fresh to be forgotten. I’d open the door to go outside and my mom would stop me, saying: “What are you thinking? It’s snowing and you’re not even wearing a coat!”, because negative 10 Celsius proves to feel way colder when the next thing on your schedule is not a fourth code Biology class.
I’d come across a funny video on TikTok and feel excited and hopeful because it would be something that made me feel good that day only for that excitement to fade again, because I’d have to stop myself from going to a few rooms down the Acon hallway. Because there is no Acon hallway anymore. It stopped existing somewhere between March 12th and May 26th. It faded into the Atlantic ocean I flew across, hid itself in the rare dorm pictures I find on my phone, blended into the watercolor mess that my memory has become. When we left, all of the places we grew to call home were left behind - and it feels like a part of me was left there too. However, there was a need to be productive. The thoughts I had, the campus life habits I still didn’t break, and the pain that I felt didn’t exactly fit into the definition of productivity.
Life still goes on, even inside the four walls of your house, people would say to me, and so I forgot about the life I knew before and threw myself into work - doing more hours, completing more assignments, writing more words than I did back when things were normal. I made calendars, bucket lists and task boards, put up personal reminders on sticky notes on every wall in my room, scheduled my days for weeks ahead. I learned more healthy recipes, downloaded workout videos and subscribed to more than a few online courses. I desperately tried to catch productivity by its tail, and just when it felt like I got the hang of things, I crashed. I became more anxious. I either slept until noon or didn’t sleep at all. My PTSD, which I have managed well for almost a year now, came back more intensely than it did before. I withdrew from people around me and seeing missed messenger text notifications from concerned friends became more terrifying than comforting.
That’s when I realized something. Just like you can’t build a strong house on an unsteady foundation, you can’t expect to grow from a challenging experience if your mind has not processed it well. And in this case, processing meant coming face-to-face with the pain I tried to repress in my race for productivity. And so I allowed myself to crash. To break down and dissolve. I cried - remembering all of the people I’d never see again, the memories that feel too distant to bring joy, the plans made and crashed by a virus outside of our control. When I stopped crying, I felt nothing - just like a useless vessel emptied of all of its contents and stripped off its purpose. I abandoned the calendars and the task boards, took down reminders and missed many of the assignments I’ve previously been working hard for.
But one thing kept me going. People say that grief shows itself in stages - and while different interpretations dissect the stages differently, one thing was always constant - the last stage of grief was always “acceptance”. So, I got up. Wiped the tears and straightened my clothes. I put up the sticky notes again, only this time the reminders were more gentle. I made time to work on my assignments, but also to rest and play Animal Crossing. Of course, it still hurts to this day - but there’s now a sense of closure. As hard as it is to acknowledge the unfair finality of many of my UWC experiences, in an unpredictable world like this, that finality has shifted from harmful to comforting. And as we get more and more news about the school’s reopening, a tentative sense of hope has taken it’s place alongside welcomed acceptance. So, there’s one thing to take away from this experience. Growth and productivity are important, amazing, and definitely worth striving for. But grief, crashing, and breaking down are just as valuable, and it is crucial to honor the pain of your experiences before deciding to forget about it. After all, it is on the darkest nights that the starts shine the brightest.