The Lonely Summer

Growing up I always wanted to be really independent. I’m an only child so I guess there’s something in me where I want to prove that I can take care of myself, which I am able to do in college.

When I was home for quarantine I kind of reverted back to my high school self, which didn’t feel so good. Obviously I appreciated being at home with my parents and getting to spend all that time with them, but it was also kind of like, ‘oh, I want to be doing my own thing.’ It sucked to have so much freedom for months and then have that all taken away.

Being in quarantine also meant being alone a lot of the time. I really don’t like being alone. For so many days, I had nothing to do and everything just felt so meaningless, just waking up with no tasks to accomplish or no goals in mind.

I was never like ‘why am I waking up?’ but I was like ‘if I oversleep five hours nothing is going to happen, so why don’t I just go back to sleep?’

I had so much free time that I didn’t really know what to do with myself. Whenever I felt lonely or just not too good about myself, I would try to find some kind of distraction.

First, I just made a bunch of FaceTime calls. I probably made like 20 to 30 calls a week, but that was just for like two weeks because I definitely couldn’t keep that up for the entirety of quarantine.

I also had school stuff and work for the Daily Orange. Then, in March, I got my summer internship.

I was supposed to intern for this summer collegiate baseball league called the Cape Cod Baseball League. I was going to spend two months living in Cape Cod — I found a person to rent a room from and all that stuff — and be a writer for their team basically, except their season got canceled. So it’s like, what are you supposed to do? It ended up being much less work; I just did a couple smaller stories and worked on a new website for them from home.

When I took a break from my work, I would go for a lot of drives in the hills because I really like driving a lot. I guess it kind of has to do with me being independent, I always wanted to drive because I was like ‘oh, that’s how I’m going to be as a grown-up.’

I would go on these hour-long drives in the Santa Cruz Mountains. At the beginning of quarantine, I’d do this every day and my dad was like ‘stop wasting so much gas.’ So after, I would say it was probably like 2-3 times a week if you average it all out.

I think that was the best alone time that I had. I would blast music, mostly Post Malone and Chance the Rapper — I’m pretty basic when it comes to music — and roll the windows down and just drive along these windy, mountainous roads. Being out in nature alone is really cool, especially when there are nice views. I just don’t want to be alone in my house.