Marquette University Intimations Project

A Senior DPT

Life’s too short to be by yourself.  That’s what I learned in my time during Covid.

I talk a lot with people about my time during the summer of 2020, just last year.  I tell them how that was the happiest time in my life, and I credit it to being this sort of nature guru.  

My daily routine would consist of meditating anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour and reading a book outside either on the front lawn of my house under the shade of my favorite tree, or on the cool chair in my backyard facing my pond the koi fish.  If I wasn’t reading a book, I’d take a walk outside on my favorite trail, or I’d drive to a park and lie down on the green grass, staring at the baby blue sky for hours.  It was a time I felt most in touch with nature.  A time I was most connected to the world, as I was an advocate for putting away my phone, leaving video games and technology behind, and just be in the moment.  Despite the death in the world, despite the people out there fighting against injustices, rallying people up using their voice, despite hospitals filling up and the death count rising every day, I was happy.  I’m not sure if it was selfish or not to be so contained within my own bubble, but again, I was happy.  

But this bubble soon burst, and I found myself at school again.  Dropped inside the middle of society again, I had to find a way to reintegrate myself into it.  Talking to friends again, dealing with drama, but also maintaining that side of myself I found during the summer.  A lot of times, I opted to not reach out to my friends, and instead go alone to the river walk downtown near the art museum, and just meditate (while I got a lot of weird looks from people passing by, staring at this cross-legged guru in the grass.). 

Although I was going through the motions of what I did during the summer, I still felt that something was off, and I didn’t know why.  I spent all this time with my stubborn mindset that I don’t need anybody.  That my best friend was myself, and I’ll be okay away from home, spending time with myself.    That’s where I went wrong.

You see, the part I fail to bring up to people when I talk about my 2020 summer is not my guru part.  It’s the parts where I got closer to my family.  

Imagine being in lockdown, the government telling you you can’t leave your house, and your stuck with whoever’s in there.  What I found was 6 other human beings I thought I knew well enough, but discovered how much I didn’t know, and how much I cherished being around them.  There’s my parents, who’ve run two marathons in the past.  During the summer, I started to tag along with them on their runs around the block.  First a mile, then two.  A journey of pushing ourselves to the limit, but also a journey of spending quality time with them.  I suffered A LOT, because I HATE RUNNING, but running with my mom and dad by my side made it bearable, and fun to see them kickass at the sport while I was dying to keep up beside them.

There’s my autistic uncle and my grandma, who we call Lola. My autistic uncle has the mind of a 4-year-old.  He can’t speak on his own, but he can copy what you say to him.  He’ll sound out the word hi if you say hi back to him.  And although his speech isn’t there, his love for music and dancing is.  We have these speakers that are constantly blasting music for our whole household to listen to.  I would love to turn on Madonna, Michael Jackson, Cyndi Lauper, and The Beatles for my uncle and watch him dance.  The face he would make would be a face of utter euphoria, like nothing else mattered in the world except for the moment of him dancing to his favorite tunes.  My Lola would watch from behind near the kitchen, with her arms crossed and a smile on her face, a smile that tells how grateful she is for her son and her grandson to get along so well.

And then there were my siblings.  The summer of 2020, I really got into Jane Austen.  I read all of Pride and Prejudice, then watched the movie starring Kiera Knightley right after, and boy oh boy, I fell in love with that movie.  I forced my brother and sister to watch that movie with me twice, and I guess feeling that I have to show them something important to me, means that they are people who are important to me too.

All of these moments.  These memories with each of my family members, contribute to my distant happiness that summer.  And although I always used to credit my guru-ness to my well-being, I can finally say it’s because I wasn’t alone.  I was kept company during a bad time in the world, and I was loved by people who had my back.

And that is what was missing when I came back from college.  A support system around my flawed, lonely character.  So many days I remember this year, staying inside my room, meditating for maybe 10 minutes, then lying in bed the rest of the day, not knowing what to do. I’d scroll through my phone, I’d play some guitar, I’d watch a TV show, but none of that scratched this itch I had.

It wasn’t until I started to put myself out there again that I found this feeling of familiarity.  I met a nice girl and we started dating.  I found a good group of friends who had my back, and who I could spend the whole night talking to.  I let go of this stubborn mindset that it’s okay to be alone, because in reality, we need each other more than we think.  Just like Zadie Smith said, we can’t all be some Buddhist monk meditating for the whole time of our days.  We need to do something.   This is the most I’ve socialized in a year, but I wouldn’t trade any of those nights, wasting time away with my friends, bullshitting around, for any night alone. So Dennis, Janelle, Ryan, and Christian, thank you for the several times we drove to chic fil a and ate our minds out.  Thank you for that one time we went to the beach together.  Thank you for getting high with me and we shared all our secrets, our worries of the future, and our shared laughs of our same humor.  Thank you for playing codenames with me.  Thank you for all the nights we played valorant and super smash bros together. Thank you for being my family away from home and thank you for sticking around by my side.  And thank you for my family, who taught me there’s nothing wrong with the need to lean on others.