Quarantine Sketch

by Mikayla Marhamas

This sketch represents how I felt during the first couple of months of quarantine. All of the uncertainty and unanswered questions made it extremely difficult to stay hopeful. As the days went on and the stay-at-home order kept expanding.

I was very quickly realizing a normal senior year was out of the question. The thought of not being able to experience the traditional senior year activities like our last prom and a proper graduation ceremony or simply getting to see my friends haunted me daily. Days quickly turned into months and I had started giving more and more.

My sleep schedule was horrible and I stopped taking care of myself. I stopped caring about the things I had once loved and truly enjoyed doing. Like many others, my mental health was only getting work. It seemed like there was nothing I could do about it, I just had to deal with the new “normal”.

There were hardly any days when I felt relaxed because my anxiety was starting to take over. The constant overthinking became a part of my daily routine. I thought a lot about all of the missed opportunities because I avoided them. All the times I didn’t go to football games or participate in school activities made me extremely guilty.

I would never be able to enjoy such simple things again during high school because graduation was fast approaching. I had taken that part of my life for granted and still regret it to this day. I have been a very introverted and shy person but quarantine only made that worse for me. I went from talking to my friends on an almost daily basis to hardly ever reaching out to them.

I learned to keep to myself because that was a lot easier especially during bad days. Most of my time was spent by myself in my room as I did my homework. Once I graduated, I still stayed home a majority of my summer because that was what I was comfortable with after being in the house for several months.