Graduation is saved for the most part, so maybe senior year will end just as well as it possibly could. I for one didn’t really care about the whole thing, as I would’ve been okay with getting my diploma in the mail and moving on with my life, but I understand how it’s a monumental moment for my family at least. My mom especially, who has seen me through every year in school and naturally deserves to see me complete the final step. I’m sure this is the same for many other families.

This graduation won’t be a normal one, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make it special despite its’ unfortunate circumstances. With stay at home regulations being eased, that means in the near future we may be able to throw proper celebrations even if it’s after the actual graduation. All one can do in this time is remain positive, right? But that’s kind of hard. Class of 2020 was supposed to be special but everything went downhill because of a pandemic that we had never imagined would spread to where we were.

It’s okay to be upset about how our school year turned out. It’s okay to want things to go back to your ideal normal. It’s okay to be bitter, angry, or depressed about what goes on in our world today.

You shouldn’t feel obligated to always look for the bright side of things. Everyone has undoubtedly gone through some kind of personal change as a result of this pandemic, with the significance of said change depending on who you are. For me, I’ve been the least motivated I’ve ever been in years, with tons of late work stacking up because I can’t even motivate myself to get out of bed.

It’s not even because I’m lazy or senioritis is really beating me down, but rather it’s just hard to work up any form of personal incentive that can motivate me to get up and work on what needs to be done. Plus, until yesterday, I was terrified that my mom had contracted the virus until her tests thankfully came back negative, so that was basically a week of my mental health being in the gutter.

I’m as good as I could ever be right now. I know there’s a lot of people in this world right now who can’t say the same, and I don’t blame them. We shouldn’t shame people for not being able to find any optimism—instead we should focus on empathy for our fellow man. We are all going through it. Literally. The least we can do is go through it together.