The View On My Screen

March 17th, 2020. Politicians were announcing plans to adopt what would be the first round of stimulus checks to combat the economic effects of the coronavirus outbreak. In San Francisco, my brother was being advised to shelter in place. Some kids I went to high school with were sharing memories of last year's green-tinted Chicago River on their Instagram stories, lamenting the loss of their favorite holiday. Another casualty of this year's scorched-earth battle tactic. 2020, it seemed, was setting fire to all in its wake.

I was pacing frantically in the bedroom I shared with my sister when I was young. All my belongings were on the other side of the country, sitting untouched in my college apartment as they had for the previous two weeks. They were meant to sit untouched until this day, the last day of my last spring break ever. I was meant to return, and pack them up in May, and then take them away from my battleground college and with me somewhere new--somewhere that wasn't exactly where I was on March 17th, 2020

The scent of cheap, fruity body spray that the plaster walls of my childhood bedroom hadn't relinquished since they first absorbed our excessive spritzing back in 2008 served as a vague reminder that I was moments away from a follow-up phone interview for a very adult job in the same few square feet of carpet that I used to spend hours sitting on crafting intricate narratives for my Barbie dolls.

I hadn't heard from the interviewer in days, and my anxiety swelled at the thought of the conversation beginning--and also at the question of whether the conversation was still on, given the present state of the world. In an attempt to work efficiently, I gathered my phone and headphones, and tossed them not-so-gently in the direction of my laptop which sat on top of the bed, open to the most recent email I'd received from the HR representative. While my phone landed safe in the cushioned crevice between the comforter and the pillows, the headphone case (much like the following seven months of my life) took an unexpected trajectory. It ricocheted off the bottom right corner of my laptop screen, inviting three inches of disruptive black lines to the righthand and bottom perimeter of my once-flawless retina display.

The interviewer never did call.

March 19th, 2020. Having booked a flight to retrieve my belongings from across the country only to arrive at the airport and learn that all outgoing flights were cancelled, I began the twelve hour drive to pack up all that I owned so I could finish my last semester of college from my childhood bedroom floor. Sitting in the passenger seat of my car, packed to the brim with cups and books and sweatshirts and every happy memory of the past three years of my life, I opened an email informing me that I did not get the very adult job. It wasn't me, the email suggested, it was "timing."

Since March, I've opened my laptop hundreds of times: to participate in Zoom classes, to watch Netflix, to finish my senior thesis, to spend hours writing cover letters, to call my friends laughing (and crying), to celebrate the birth of my first niece, to open dozens of fresh rejection emails, to read my writing in front of others, to graduate from college, to register to vote, and to write this. Right now. I've adjusted windows and browsers to fit inside the big black lines on my screen that never disappeared, that serve as a constant reminder of that day and the end of life as I knew it, or my life as I thought it was going to be. And now my belongings and happy memories sit in boxes on the second floor of my old suburban home, packed up and waiting to be somewhere new. And I face that laptop screen each day, with those lines obscuring the full view. The bigger picture I once had. The bigger picture I've grown so accustomed to living without that I can't seem to remember what it looked like in the first place.