By Gabriel Ponte-Fleary
It was March 2020 when I started to hear about a new virus spreading in China, but I never thought it was going to spread around the world and turn our lives upside down. Everything got messy from there, schools shutting down, non-essential business shutting down, orders of quarantine, and then worst of all the toilet paper war.
Personally, COVID-19 didn’t impact my life in a horrible way. I was fortunate, I never got sick and I kept my two jobs (RIT and Target), thanks to God. I didn’t have to worry about not having an income to pay rent or having to apply for unemployment, etc. Working from home for RIT was quite challenging because I had no motivation at all, my couch was right in front of me and it was tempting to just sit there and take a nap, watch TV, grab a snack every hour, or just stare out the window watching the “outside world.” Home wasn’t the best environment for productivity. Working at Target was kind of scary at first, I was feeling paranoid having to work around people and having to worry about washing my hands often and staying 6 ft apart from everyone. Then when going back to home I had to take my clothes off by the entrance and spray them with Lysol and take a shower right away, which became an annoying new routine in my life. Little by little, I started to become less fearful of this virus, but was still careful.
Currently, I still have both jobs at RIT and Target. I work at Target 2-3 days a week after I am done working at RIT. For RIT, I’m working mostly on campus, but once a while I am able to make the decision to work from home. Working from campus has been a new experience because all of the new rules we have to follow. Also, campus has become very quiet and most of my department works from home, so I don’t see my friends often. It feels lonely sometimes, especially during lunch time which used to be a time that I would spend with friends.
What impacted me the most was having to quarantine alone for about 4 months, which was kind of hard for me since I am a social person and I was used to be around my friends (thank God for technology and video calls). Quarantine was quite boring, I spent most of my free time watching movies, but there were times that it wasn’t entertaining anymore. Some things I did to kill time was cooking (sometimes I tried new recipes), walking every day for at least one hour, taking a summer class to stay busy, and once in a while, when things started to calm down, I got to meet friends in open spaces where we could keep social distance. I didn’t develop new hobbies, but I got to make a couple of new pieces of artwork (I didn’t feel inspired often to do so).
My mother and sister lived in NYC at that time and did get sick with COVID-19. They have since made a full recovery and are doing well. But it was stressful for me to not be able to take care of them or support them in that difficult time. My mom and I video called 2-3 days a week so I could get updates on their health. They recovered after about 3 weeks. Once they were fully recovered and had obtained a negative test, they came to visit me in Rochester. Here they were able to breathe fresher air than what they were used to in NYC and that helped them.
The greatest challenge of this pandemic has been the masks. As a Deaf person, it’s very hard to communicate with people, both hearing and Deaf. With hearing people it is difficult because I rely on lip reading to understand them. With Deaf people, the masks create a barrier to facial expressions, a very important part of ASL that helps to understand tone and meaning. At Target communication can be challenging because not all customers are comfortable pulling their mask down so I can read lips, or getting close to me to use the text option. Overall, wearing masks is really annoying having to still use it at this point. I feel that we have to adapt to include masks as part of our outfits, and that seems like a big mental investment.
2020 has been a crazy year, every month has brought a new shocking event, but COVID-19 is the one thing that has been a constant and it seems that it is not going away any time soon. This is our new life, or like people say, our “new normal.” The important things that we need to do are to stay safe (wash hands, wear your mask), stay healthy, and keep a positive attitude because this too shall pass.
