Letters Spread

Dear Future Me,

It’s March 23, 2020. Today, actually an hour ago, the governor announced that school is closing for the rest of the year. It’s hard to put into words; hard doesn’t even cover it, how I feel at this moment. A few years from now when I look back at this, all of these feelings and concerns will be but specks of dust in a blurry and faraway past. That past is the end of my sophomore year.

Before we realized how serious COVID-19 was, my problems included trying to get straight A’s and telling my mom that I didn’t want to be a doctor—I guess you know how that turned out. Now my problems are much more real. I will probably never see my senior friends again unless we happen to cross paths at college, a job interview, or maybe while watching our kids come home from their first day of school. I also missed out on a lot of memories: my last day of school, my best friend’s birthday sleepover, and most of all, the little things like the stupid jokes we were going to laugh at and the projects we were going to rant about while walking the track in gym.

It doesn’t seem real. I don’t know if I still read a lot; knowing me, I probably don’t too often because of school projects or clubs, but it feels like I’m in a book. Time seems to stand still; maybe they were right saying that time is nothing but a social construct.

I just want you to be happy. Take a deep breath. Enjoy life. You never know when something is about to throw you off course. I sure didn’t.

Sincerely,
You

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April 28, 2020
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Dear Class of 2020,
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I want to start off by expressing how immensely proud I am of all of us. We did it! We finished high school, and we should acknowledge and admire that accomplishment. I know the current situation is not ideal, as we all thought that in these coming months we would be spending our “lasts” together.
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I know our high school story finished suddenly, and I know it was hard on a lot of us. When the news came out that school would be closed for the remainder of the year, I almost didn’t believe it. For days I lived in denial of the fact that what was supposed to be the best part of my senior year, was simply gone. It just vanished in an instant, and there was no way to get it back. Seeing everyone post their final goodbyes to the class of 2020 on social media brought tears to my eyes. It didn’t feel real, and some days, I would wake up thinking, hoping, everything would go back to normal.
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In the last month, I have done a lot of reflection on the past four years. I would spend hours scrolling through my phone, looking at old memories. There was a bittersweet feeling that came from looking at the past and not knowing about the uncertainty of our future, but I realized something. I realized that, even though the class of 2020 may not physically be together; even though we don’t know when we will be able to see our friends again, or when we’ll be able to say our final “thank yous” to our teachers; even though the future is unpredictable, we are all going through the same thing. One day soon, we will realize that life keeps moving on, and the best thing we can do is to cherish the memories we had, and to look forward to creating new memories in the future.
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Because of this situation, we are more unified than ever before. We are the class of 2020, and we are proud of it. We are the class whose high school years were cut short, but we are also the class that will continue to rise above adversity; and we will do so, together. I am forever grateful to be a part of this phenomenal group of students, and I cannot wait to see what the future holds for each and every one of us. We will persevere. I am so incredibly proud to be a Phoenix!
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Class of 2020 Strong!

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