What am I fueled by?
A self-assessment at nineteen. I hope to write this every year.Some of these are merely blatant truisms, but I’m nineteen and have so much more to learn about and uncover and are a start to where I must ground myself.
Author: Chia Amisola
In midway
I’m no exception when it comes to feeling like I’ve aged decades in the past two weeks, when in reality I’m just nearing my second one. In my sophomore spring, I received and then lost an internship offer in America, was near-evicted from my college and then received dozens of messages of support in the form of housing and food from people all over the country, danced in the––for the first time ever––empty school courtyard that I have overlooked for the past eight months and will for the next two years, and broken down alone figuring out what of my life to throw away then keep, and so on.
Before I do, I must fight
I feel like I’ve aged a lot in the past week. I’ve been swept by scary news around my family, almost-homelessness in a country 8,000 miles away, my loved ones back in Manila in lockdown in a state that has essentially imposed martial law, the loss of life-changing opportunities that I had thought beckoned the fight and narrative of why I chose to come to America, and so much more. Turning 20 in the midst of a global pandemic, I write to you from a dormitory in my campus, now more still than ever. For every student who talks about how New Haven is boring (or worse, scary) is always so mistaken. There are no cars on the street in the dead of night, no lights in the Saybrook courtyard anymore, I am the sound of what is left. * Time right now is not difficult because social distancing it’s hard. It’s difficult because my brain is scrambling for the sense of normalcy prior, even if it were a disjoint existence. We’ll see more of …