You’re Not Alone

These words are the closest thing to a hug I can give you right now.

The author, shortly after arriving in Nepal.

One year ago, I knew exactly where my life was going. I had the luxury of certainty and the confidence of a fresh graduate starting his career by serving overseas.

That all vanished back in March.

As I’ve moved through 2020 and 2021, trying to survive and reassemble my life into something like it used to be, only one thing has kept me sane.

Reminding myself that I’m not alone.

Reconnecting with friends and family, and commiserating over the fact that the world has become a fountain of nonsense. Talking to them about all of the things we’re going to do when this is all over, how we’re going to embrace and go everywhere that we can.

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I wish I could hug you right now.

I may not know you personally, but I know you probably need it as badly as I do. Someday soon, we’ll be together again, dear stranger. Maybe I’ll see you at a concert, or maybe we’ll accidentally bump into each other at a coffee shop and marvel at the fact that we didn’t have to be six feet apart.

Until that day, I wanted to share my story with you to remind you that this is not happening to you, it’s happening to us. You are part of a billions-strong community of people whose lives have been upended.

If you’re comfortable, I’d like you to leave a comment or shoot me an email telling me the story of how this pandemic has interrupted or changed your life.

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We’re in this together. Here’s my story.

At the end of January 2020, before everything exploded, I flew to Philadelphia to meet the cohort of people that I was going to spend two years in the Peace Corps with, serving in Nepal. We’d all gone through months of medical clearances, background checks, and dragged forgotten documents from dark corners of our lives during the Peace Corps’s wildly bureaucratic application process.

There was tremendous excitement as we gathered together, consolidating our respective luggage as we prepared to fly to Kathmandu via Qatar.

When we arrived, we all spent one and a half months living in a medium-sized city outside of Kathmandu, staying with host families. We learned how to do our laundry by hand, how to eat with our right hand, and clean ourselves off in the squat toilet with our left.

Most of us got sick several times as our bodies adjusted to the biome and the food. It was hard at first. I came close to quitting in the first week.

I pushed through my desire to give up, and within a few weeks, I found myself falling in love with Nepal.

I started to love eating the same food twice a day, and the awkwardness of trying to communicate with my host family. I looked forward to my day off so that I could play soccer and Frisbee with my teenage host cousins. It was hard in the ways I wanted it to be. I felt challenged, which was exactly what I was looking for.

6 weeks into our experience, it was time to go on our “permanent site visit.” (For anyone unfamiliar with how the Peace Corps works, you get three months of group training first, then you move to a “permanent site” on your own for two years).

I was going to meet the family I was going to spend two years living with and meet the principal of the school I was going to teach in. I was excited.

My cohort and I traveled to our district capital and prepared to split up so we could all visit our individual sites.

I was scheduled to serve in a high-altitude village called “Chishapanni” (meaning “cold water” in Nepali).

On the day I was supposed to visit, the principal of the school I was set to teach in took the 4-Hour Jeep ride down the mountain just to welcome me so that I wouldn’t have to navigate alone. He told me how excited the students were, and how happy the school was to be hosting me. We loaded my things into the Jeep and prepared for the journey back up to the village.

That’s when I got the call. Several international airports had been shut down because of COVID. Peace Corps was deciding to suspend operations in every country. 7000 volunteers in various stages of service from 77 countries were going home.

I explained this to my principal, trying to hold back tears. He just smiled at me and told me it was okay. That I’d be back in a few months when Coronavirus ran its course. My little host family cousins said the same thing as I was sobbing and telling them to keep the Frisbee I had brought with me from the states. They told me I’d be back, and that they were excited to see me again whenever that day would come.

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We are almost a year into this pandemic now, and there’s no sign of reopening.

I still have dreams where I’m in my host family’s house, eating Dal Bhaat and laughing. Then I wake up to realize that I’m still here, and the world is still a confusing mess. I’ve re-read my Nepal journal 20 or 30 times, trying unsuccessfully to recapture the feeling of fulfillment and purpose that I was experiencing.

Throughout this gigantic crap storm, the only thing that has kept me moving forward is reminding myself that I’m not alone. I want to extend that to you.

Your feelings of apathy, depression, numbness, and fear are being experienced simultaneously by millions, if not billions of other people whose lives have been upended by this tornado of nonsense.

This is a time for forgiveness, for yourself and others. Have you not milked every last drop of your potential out of yourself this last year? Neither have I. I forgive you.

Have you dropped off with exercise at different times in this pandemic? So have I. I forgive you.

I’ve had weeks where I exercised every day, believing that if I only gritted my teeth and toughened up, I could fight my way out of this pandemic. I’ve had weeks where I did absolutely nothing, believing that if I just kept my head down, maybe the pandemic wouldn’t see me and it would go away.

There have been days I’ve simply driven for hours, hoping to outrun this tremendous sense of apathy that is crushing the breath from my lungs.

I’ve been diving into old books, thinking “there must be answers in here” only to come up for air and see that it is still not safe to go outside and that I haven’t answered a damn thing. I want to rip all the masks off and throw them at God, just to see a stranger smile at me again. But I can’t.

I wish more than anything that I could embrace you, and tell you that everything’s going to be okay. I’ll still tell you, without the embrace. Everything is going to be ok.

We are going to get through this. Nothing like this pandemic can ever, or has ever, lasted forever.

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The only way we will get through (and stay sane) is together.

I want to know your stories. Leave a comment and tell me how your life has changed in the pandemic. If you don’t feel like sharing publicly, but you still want to talk or just need a friend, my email and Instagram handle are in my author profile.

We are experiencing this trauma together. Let’s hold hands and get each other through it.