A rough start

I haven’t been on WordPress for ages. Years ago, I wrote a blog on this platform under a pseudonym, which I won’t mention for privacy reasons. I should go back to posting on that blog sometime. I have returned, however, to do a school assignment while school is on shutdown due to coronavirus.

Speaking of school, it’s nice not to have to wake up at five in the morning to catch the bus at six every day, but I feel like I’m tearing my hair out. I’ve become a hypochondriac. I can’t see my friends or anyone outside my family. My parents bought some food from Bea’s Bakery and asked me to deliver one of the boxes to my neighbor, but I curled up into a ball because I thought I’d get coronavirus. So Tatay delivered it instead on the condition that next time the neighbor gave us chocolates, he would eat them all. Looking back, it probably was an overreaction. I was scared and upset, though, because I usually experience asthma complications whenever I catch a virus. I’ve had four asthma flare-ups this school year now; my asthma hasn’t been well controlled because of stress. I feel like the stress from having to stay inside and not see my friends is going to trigger another asthma flare-up, but if I go outside and mingle, I am at risk of catching the virus and spreading it to my diabetic parents and immunocompromised brother. Damned if I do and damned if I don’t. It sucks being an extrovert these days.

I was crying for most of the day today, so Nanay was trying to console me. “You can see J.O.,” she suggested, “and go for a walk with him around the neighborhood. You just can’t touch him or go to any restaurants, though.” J.O., my best friend who recently became my boyfriend, is the easiest person to see because he lives across the street from me when he’s with his dad.

“But I can’t see him,” I said, “because what if he has it and just doesn’t know it? He might have been somewhere in the past where he interacted with someone that had coronavirus, and then the virus might jump to me.” Nanay was thinking of giving some Prozac to me to help me, but I took that yesterday and promptly got very dizzy.

I certainly won’t die without seeing my friends for several weeks, though; I’ve gone through this before. I have lots of things I like to do alone. Maybe I should start doing more of those to distract myself.