Life in Two Years

Who would've thought each one of us will experience lockdown, being stuck at home for long periods? For sure, we never expected that life will be tough for us. So how did the last two years of your life went? It's good that we talk about it at times.

The start of the lockdown, I am in disbelief. I expected it won't take long that it will end in weeks or months. Previous pandemic took few years. We're living in an era with high technology. Those are my thoughts at first. But quarantine periods has been extended again and again, then uncertainty came.

I don't want to make plans because I have no idea where are we heading. There are summer plans during 2020, which didn't happen. Because of the uncertainty, I want the pandemic to end before I make decisions.

The start of the pandemic, I was exhausted. I mean I need some rest because I admit, I am tired doing a lot of things. Thus, I looked at the positive side that at least two weeks, it will help to get those exhaustion away.

Our usual outdoor activities, which includes teaching deaf people, was in a halt. Gladly, there are arrangements to continue virtually. Zoom app became popular, and Messenger became very useful. We got to continue teaching our deaf students, but looking at their accounts over Facebook isn't easy.

Up to this day, we continue to reach them out virtually, and happy to see more of them. Funny, some of them were found just recently.

Our meetings in sign language were done virtually. And just today, we went in back in-person, while others are still on Zoom. We're given the go-signal, while health protocols need to be observed.

My health, physically and mentally, suffered during long periods of being at home. For months, I'm able to do exercises which went to decline until I became sedentary. I get headaches often because of the heat. I developed insomnia as well.

Now that we're going back to normalcy, I need to improve my health, though I feel quite late. Still, I'm convincing myself that living a healthy lifestyle, even late, is better than not doing anything.

I'm happy that I never got Covid. There are months that I never left home at all. I got fever, probably flu, but I never had colds, cough, or loss of smell and taste. Just fever and headaches, and it took around 5 days to recover. It happened twice but the second one is just minor.

I heard a sad news though, that my sister and her wife are positive of Covid. Eventually, they survived which is a good news. However, my brother-in-law got positive again after more than a year, and I'm glad he recovered quickly.

Talking about Covid, our village had the first case in our town, and we experienced a hard lockdown. It means we cannot leave our village, we cannot buy our needs by going to the town proper, and no schedule given for us to go to the market. And worst, we haven't received any relief goods for more than three weeks. I'm not sure if other households received one during the first or second week, but I haven't heard any.

After a month, relief goods are distributed in houses but they skipped our house. Thanks to our neighbor for notifying them to give some for us. Yeah, we just received few kilos of rice, around two packs of instant noodles, and a few canned goods. That's all. Then we heard that they are giving away kilos of rice at the Barangay Hall. My brother came but our names are not on the list. Eventually, he was given one. It happened, I think, twice. After that, we received nothing. Even the "ayuda" or money to support some families, we didn't receive anything. Then I heard even single persons received twice, and they have beautiful house. Oh, the unfairness.

Do care to share some bits about your life during the last two years.

Thanks to my sponsor/s below: