It was unlike any other event that I've experienced in my lifetime. This virus, what was it? 

During March of 2020, schools had declared a 2 weekend break off, which seemed like an awesome thing to happen, but little did I know that it would affect me and my family, and it grew to affect the entire world at that. This thought-to-be minor respiratory system virus grew so fast and large-scale that it affected about half of American adults, with 35% of Adults admitting to being positive of COVID-19. 

For my first day of highschool, instead of taking the first day of school pictures and having my mom stress about us being late due to traffic, I had to wake up, turn on my computer, and join a google meeting, which I had no idea how to do at the time. 

"Wake up mijo, you have to log onto the computer and do whatever you have to do and join those meetings.” 

“Alright Ma I'll do that, but it's so crazy how we have to join these meetings instead of actually going to school, don't you think?” 

"Yup, now I have to spend all day with you guys in the house."  

For the first time in my life, I spent the first day of school at home, on a computer. It felt like both a blessing and a curse to be doing school at home from the comfort of my own room. It was a blessing because quite frankly, I slept through classes and countless google meetings. I also got to play video games while being in the google meetings which I never thought would be possible. The bad side of this however, was that I was never able to really be social and talk with people. 

In the months prior, it was very challenging because I loved being outside interacting with others, but once Covid came into my life, we had to stay away from each other, and the thing that annoyed me the most–masks– they bothered my big ears, and having to consistently breath in hot air over and over again just had me more irritated. 

Going from middle school to highschool was even more difficult for me, due to the fact that I was separated from all my friends who ended up going to different highschools with each other. Making friends wasn’t difficult for me, as I was still very social with, or without the pandemic occurring. It was just harder because of this big rule that everyone had, where you couldn't get too close, or else “You’ll give me covid.” 

Living in the big apple while the pandemic was happening made it show me how severe covid really was, the streets of Manhattan were filled with emptiness and there was even a huge shortage of food and even surprisingly, toilet paper. But what was even worse, the unemployment rates. During the Pandemic there was a decrease in employment of 13.6 percent, which is 20.5 million jobs that were lost between March and April of 2020. 

One of those people who was affected by this was my mom, and she did whatever she could to make sure me and my siblings were okay. No matter what happened, I was always grateful, because I always knew that I had faith in God and I knew my family was going to be alright. 

2020 was a bit of a rough year, but we made it through the year COVID free . . . That was until about March of 2021, when I ended up going on an out-of-state trip with 5 other friends to my friend Jose’s grandma's house. It was so much fun because we had his grandma's whole basement, which had about 4 rooms. We played a lot of video games, ate a lot of snacks, played lots of basketball, and it's something that I'll never forget. 

We stayed there for about 3 days, and on the car ride back home to New York, which was about a 2 and a half hour ride, we were all playing this new murder mystery game Among Us on our phones. 

Jose was the first one who had it, and we didn’t think much of it when he first told us “ My head hurts guys, and my stomach does too, man what if I have Covid?” 

My other Friend Jayden jokingly responded back with “ Dude it was probably just that crazy hot sauce your grandma made, that stuff was mad spicy,” 

“yeah but Reece had some too with the rice and chicken but he doesn't feel anything right Reece?” 

I couldn't help but laugh, but then he scared me after saying that so then I said “ I would hope you don't have covid, we’d all be screwed if you did.” 

Well it ended up happening, I ended up getting COVID, and so did all of my other friends who went on this trip. 2 days after the trip we all were playing video games with each other when my friend Jose called all of us on facetime telling us the bad news. 

“ Really Reece, that sucks now we need to get you tested too. We probably have to quarantine too now because you probably have covid as well,” 

“Ma im really sorry I didn’t know that would happen, I don't know how Jose caught covid over there.” I felt like I had let my mom down, and I really felt bad, because my sisters got covid because of me too, but somehow my mom ended up never catching it. 

The next day felt like a living hell for me.I woke up in a pool of sweat and I had a banging headache. I knew these were the symptoms of the ‘Rona kicking in. I couldn’t taste or smell, and it was hard for me to breathe. I was also super congested and had a very hard cough. I had to stay in my room all day and I had to find the power to drag myself out of my bed to my desk so that I can at least play video games with all of my friends who had also caught covid from the trip. It took me about 2 weeks to get better and once I did, the only thing I wanted to do was go outside. I rode my bike a lot and got to Witness the emptiness in the streets and honestly, I kinda liked it. Living in such a hectic city and then this virus comes out and makes people stay inside, it felt more peaceful for once. 

After I got covid, I ended up wanting to get vaccinated. It was a very controversial thing in my household, because things like vaccines are supposed to come out years after, but the first vaccines came out only 9 months after covid first came out. These vaccines came out of nowhere and once they did come out, you couldn’t go anywhere without having the shot. The main benefit of getting the vaccine was simply that it protected people from becoming seriously ill from covid, becoming hospitalized from it, or eventually dying from covid. However, the side effects from the vaccine was that it left your arm swollen, you would have a fever and headaches, which doesn't sound all completely bad. 

Me and all my siblings agreed that we should, but our mom opposed the idea of the vaccine,  because according to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, ini the first six months of the vaccines going out, 5,343 people died from the vaccines, out of the more than 310 million vaccines given out. Me and my older sister ended up convincing our mom to let us get the vaccines, and once we got the vaccination cards, it felt like a sign of relief and I felt like a free bird again. 

Life was starting to get better again. I slowly but surely started to see more and more people out on the streets again, and the city was going back to its prior self. I was going into my sophomore year of High School and it was starting to feel like I actually went to school  instead of doing work at home. Then during the end of 2021, I started to find out about the different variants of Covid, such as the Omicron variant. Covid came in waves, and every couple of months there was always something new, but one thing about New Yorkers, they were strong, resilient, and most importantly they just didn't care. Going into 2022 we were all tired of Covid because it had taken too long to clear up, so slowly people stopped wearing masks, and more and more people started to go back to their normal lives prior to Covid impacting our lives. 

The school year went by quickly, and before I knew it, summer was around the corner. During the summer I went down south for 2 weeks to North Carolina and I went with my dad and his wife with my other siblings and It showed me how these southern states also weren’t bugged by covid. I think it's also because of the density of the population in New York, but I had a great time and even went down to Myrtle beach for 2 days and a night. I also got to go to Boston to see my favorite cousins for a few weeks and I got to play a lot of baseball, basketball, football, and soccer. We did a lot with each other and I missed them a lot because I hadn't seen them in a while because they also caught covid when they were supposed to drive down to New York to visit family. 

My Summer was filled with fun activities and it went by fast, but now I was going into my Junior Year of highschool, which ended up being one of my hardest years of school. Covid was still alive with new variants, but it was dying down so eventually, we got to take our masks off in school. The first 2 months of school was fun until it took a dark approach and it impacted my life very deeply. I lived in Astoria  for most of the pandemic, but then I moved to Ozone Park in late October, and it was an amazing gift to be able to move into a new place for my birthday. 

Whenever I would get home from school, I was never able to see my mom because my grandmother was very sick and she had cancer for a long time so It never felt like a bad thing, but in November it worsened. I started to try to visit her a lot more because my mom told me I should, and I wanted to be there for my mom, I could see she was stressed out. I was always close to my grandma but I grew a very close relationship with her in those last few weeks… December was one of the worst months of my entire life. I had to see my loving and caring old lady slowly die and it felt like a knife going through my heart. She always told me how much she believed in me and how much she loved me. 

Her last few days were very hard and she knew it was going to come, and my cousin from Boston was in town at the time so she was at my house with my 2 sisters, but me and my mom decided to go see my grandmother. She was filled with so much joy when she heard I was coming by to visit her. She was very bedridden, but she felt like a kid on christmas morning when she first saw me walk into her room. We talked for an hour, and it was very emotional and very hard for me. When I gave her that final hug before I left, I couldn’t help but cry my eyes out as I held her close and closer.  I knew this would be one of the last times that I would see her. 

She passed away in the next couple of days, and when we all received the call from the hospital, I was devastated and destroyed. I ended up not going to school that entire week of school, and I ended up getting sick that entire weekend too. Going back into school, it was rough. I had no focus on anything, I was mourning my grandmother's death, I wanted nothing to do with anything, I just wanted to be there for my sisters and my mother. 

It took me a little while to get myself together and to start doing work but I eventually got back on track with school. I  was barely passing my classes and I was never able to find it in myself to do work because the recent death of my grandmother put me in a huge slump. But with the help and support of my friends and family, I was able to go back onto track and I was able to finally be my previous self. Although It was a struggle throughout the rest of the school year, I was able to do it, and I was able to go into my senior year. 

I beat Covid, I lived through the pandemic and there were a lot of ups and a ton of downs, but I beat it. Nothing conquered me.