Wonder Grace Joy: The beginning of the end?

COVID.....ugh.

Today marks the official end of the public health emergency New Jersey's governor put into effect on March 7, 2020.

2020 seems like 3 lifetimes ago yet it also seems like yesterday. For the past two years, I kept thinking, this is all a bad dream and we are going to wake up and it will be March 13, 2020 again and things will be totally different.

March 13, 2020 for me is when the shit really hit the fan. I had a terrible day and my welcome screen on my computer was this ominous black and white photo of a mountain with clouds AND its was Friday the 13th. what could go wrong?!

You know in the beginning where it was two weeks to flatten the curve, everyone was excited to have time off, to be home /work for home. The memes that were floating around the internet were hilarious and while we all tried to make light of this situation but people were fighting for their lives in the hospitals and the front line workers were fighting something that they didn't have proper protection for. They were experiencing all the uncertainty, the rest of the country was facing but they couldn't stay home, they had to work. We never thought in our wildest dreams that in 2022, we would still be in this mess, its much less then what it was but nonetheless, were still in it.

In March and April 2020, I wrote a lot about my thoughts and feels on COVID-19 and how confused and scared and nervous I was because everything was so new and unknown. Writing had helped me process what I was feeling and what was happening. After a while, I stopped watching the news, it got to be too much for me and I just couldn't take it anymore.

COVID had brought a lot of things into perspective for me and reflecting back on the what life was like before COVID. I think in these past two years, I have grown into someone that I am starting to really like. Does this new person still have some growing to do? HECK YES! But she seems to be on the right path and in the right direction. I don't think I would be this person if COVID didn't happen. Things work out in the weird ways.

As we enter into the end-emic stage (I don't know if we are truthfully, but I would like to think so seeing how restrictions are become less and less and life is slowly returning to normal), I am thankful for all the hard times and how I've grown during this time. I guess everything happens for a reason but to be honest, I wish this didn't happen the way it did.

Looking back in the photos/screenshots I took back in March of 2020, I found this:

I believe it was from I ♡intelligence and I feel this is the perfect way to end this post, may we never take for granted the small things we have missed over the past two years.

[[Its not going to be this hard forever]]