Like many other teenagers, I tend to think I’m invincible. Every day I hear about bad things happening to other people and think, ‘That could never happen to me.’ I’d like to think I have pretty good judgement, yet I often go about life with the knowledge that something bad could happen to me, but it probably won’t.
Aliza Lev
Sometimes I drive too fast even though I know I could crash. Other times, I skip class when I know it might hurt my grades. Most often, I think my 19-year-old body is immune to any kind of harm even when I know that it’s not.
When the coronavirus first started to make its way into the news in the beginning of 2020, I thought to myself, ‘It hasn’t reached the United States yet, and it probably never will.’ I was proven wrong in only a few short months when the country shut down in March.
Even with COVID-19 rapidly spreading through my own country and even my town, killing thousands of people and shutting down almost the entire world, I never doubted that I would somehow be untouchable.
In the grocery store or at restaurants, my mask felt like armor. Despite the fact that I touched the same shopping carts that others had touched moments before and stood in lines just a few feet away from other customers, I always felt completely protected.
Once I returned to Lehigh for my sophomore year, I was pleasantly surprised to see that there were practically zero cases of coronavirus among students. So many people had warned me that on a college campus, the virus would spread much easier and the likelihood of me getting sick would increase significantly.
Naturally, I didn’t take any of that especially seriously. I thought that if cases were low when I first got to school, they would stay low forever. But as I’m sure you’ve realized by now, that wasn’t the case.
On Sept. 28, I faced a rude awakening. Someone I knew had been exposed and tested positive for COVID-19 that very morning.
On Oct. 2, I faced an even ruder awakening. My own test came back positive.
In just a week, I had gone from thinking I was bulletproof to feeling blindsided, ill and defeated.
This was no longer the virus that only existed in other countries and only affected other people. This was the virus that my friends were getting and that was shutting down our entire campus.
So as it turns out, I’m not invincible. No one is. I could crash my car because I drive too fast, I could fail a class because I skipped it and I could get COVID-19 when I’m convinced that I won’t.
I’m not a reckless person, and I don’t go out of my way to put myself in dangerous situations, but I’m young and hopeful about my future. I don’t like to think that bad things might happen to me, even though sometimes it’s a reality.
I’ve become more and more comfortable as I’ve gotten older with the fact that bad things don’t just happen to other people. They could happen to me or you, and they certainly have happened to all of us at some point. While no one is exempt from challenges, it’s still important to take care of ourselves.
I don’t expect to wake up tomorrow morning with a perfect sense of judgement, but maybe I’ll pay more attention to the speed limit because, as tough as it might be for me to grasp, I’m not and never will be invincible.
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