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I sit on my front porch listening to music and watching my neighbor cut his grass. Being outside helps me to not feel confined to my house during self-isolation.<\/p>\n
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LEXINGTON, S.C.<\/strong> \u2013 As I sit on my parents\u2019 front porch in Lexington, the cul-de-sac I grew up on doesn\u2019t seem any different than it did before the world was told to stay inside.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The trees are still green, the road is still quiet and I still wave to my neighbor as he cuts the grass in his front yard.<\/span><\/p>\n Conversations inside my house, however, have changed in a way we never expected.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n My mom worries if we have enough food, but she doesn\u2019t want to go out more than we need to for fear of getting the coronavirus. My 16-year-old brother complains about having classes online, even though he knows it\u2019s necessary. My twin sister is anxious to be home \u2014 her college in Spartanburg announced online classes and told students to move out a week after mine did.<\/span><\/p>\n My dad was hired as a copy editor for a company magazine less than a week before our state\u2019s lockdown. He is spending his first month on the job working at our kitchen table.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The weirdest thing about starting a job in the middle of a pandemic, my dad says, is collaborating with people he\u2019s never met before. He spends all day sending emails to people he only knows by name.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Besides his frustration with the lack of social connection, he\u2019s also trying to process an emotion he doesn\u2019t see people expressing over social media.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re not acknowledging anger,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m angry that our lives have been put on hold by something you can\u2019t even see.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n As for me, I spent our extended college spring break avoiding my feelings and watching live Instagram stories. My favorite artist, Irish pop singer Niall Horan, released an album March 13, so I spent the week streaming his music, watching his live streams and FaceTiming my friends for eight hours straight.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I was watching Horan\u2019s live stream when I found out graduation was postponed. My mom walked into my room crying. The May 2020 celebration she planned for both of her daughters vanished in an instant. We were both grieving about the day we looked forward to for 22 years.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I feel waves of sadness, frustration and anger about what this pandemic has taken away from our community. Hugs, high-fives and holding hands are gone for now.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Today, I feel at peace with the unknown. We will control the spread of COVID-19 by isolating ourselves and caring for those around us. We will have our graduation. We will press play on our social lives again. But for now, I\u2019ll be on my front porch streaming my favorite music and waving to my neighbor. <\/span><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My mom worries about getting sick. My brother hates his online classes. My sister frets about moving home. And my dad started a new job at our kitchen table. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":263,"featured_media":33387,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[1706],"tags":[1557,447,1717,190],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carolinanewsandreporter.cic.sc.edu\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33051"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carolinanewsandreporter.cic.sc.edu\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carolinanewsandreporter.cic.sc.edu\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carolinanewsandreporter.cic.sc.edu\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/263"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carolinanewsandreporter.cic.sc.edu\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33051"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/carolinanewsandreporter.cic.sc.edu\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33632,"href":"https:\/\/carolinanewsandreporter.cic.sc.edu\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33051\/revisions\/33632"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carolinanewsandreporter.cic.sc.edu\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carolinanewsandreporter.cic.sc.edu\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carolinanewsandreporter.cic.sc.edu\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carolinanewsandreporter.cic.sc.edu\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}