Through the Screen
By: Aurizza Amanda
Tags: Pandemic, Loneliness, Isolation, Virtual, College Life

In the pitch darkness, the only sources of light come from a fifteen-inch square screen and keyboard-light. The only sounds heard is the whirr of an old air conditioner, a faint music from somebody’s party which still rolls on into the early morning hours, and my hands typing on the keyboard as fast as I can without making any typo.

Done. A bit messy, could have done better, but it is the best that I can do at 3 AM.

Submitted.

Feeling a bit relieved, I close my eyes for a second. However, seconds later a dull ring of notification interrupts my peace. I turn around to get my phone, squinting at the too-bright screen. A short notice from my landlord, announcing the rent price of my cramped apartment has increased significantly. My heart suddenly stops. In times like these, any small increase can tip the delicate balance of my income and expenses. I have not worked my part-time job as a waiter in a small pizza place since the pandemic hit last year. Now, my income only comes from a bit of commission if someone hire me to write their essays. It is not enough.

Everything still feels unreal now. It is my first year of college, yet I have never set my foot in the campus and meet my friends in real life. Only through the screen of my laptop, I can have a college experience. Of course, it is a little bit different than what I expected. The mixed sound of footsteps and chatters echoing a hall become the distant buzz in a quiet video meeting. The smell of old books in the library become the same old musty smell of my small apartment. People’s faces are shown in pixels, sometimes becoming distorted due to bad signals.

There was this one time where my dream started to take a strange format. Instead of a normal dream where I meet people and do things, screens took over it. Chat bubbles with emojis, talking to a guy I have admired in the class. Squares of video conference. A blank page on Microsoft Word, along with the frustration of not having any idea. When I woke up, I knew that I cannot categorize sequences of that dream as weird anymore. When something appears on your dream, it means that it has been fully internalized in your brain as your reality. Since then, I rarely dreamed. But when I did, the screens always came back.

It is half past 4 AM now. I spent the last hour and a half watching a bread-making documentary mindlessly, trying to not think about anything. Still, it failed. I shut down the screen, laying in the dark again. When I close my eyes, it feels darker than before, even if I do not know if that is possible. Something is here, feeling familiar like an old friend visit.

Only one word comes up as I listen to the silence. Loneliness.

Loneliness is a weird friend to have. Most people do not like it, so they try to avoid it by making actual friends. Others still feel lonely even when they have friends. And there’s people like me, who is trying to befriend loneliness. It does work wonders, especially since my world has been reduced to a bunch of screens. As I feel it ebbs and flows, I try to not fight it. Being as it is, drowned in the alone-ness. Letting the pain sit in me. Until I finally drift off…

It is almost 9 AM when I finally wake up and jump right back to the screens. Once again, loneliness is nowhere to be seen. But it always finds a way back.