DAY 43. 29/04/2020
Dear diary,
A good night’s sleep and some sunshine really is the best medicine when you’re stuck in your house all day.
DAY 54 10/05/2020
Dear diary,
I just found out that a boy that lives in the road from me got stabbed the other day, not the best thing to hear before going on a morning walk, but it definitely puts things into perspective. It makes you a lot more alert when you’re walking down the street and weary of the people around you. But then you realise, people are as weary of you as you are of them. Whenever you’re walking around you can’t help but see strangers with face masks judging you from a distance as they try not to get too close to you as you walk down the street. I try not to take it personally, obviously everyone’s just trying to stay safe right? Sometimes it’s just hard not to.
Knowing that someone’s gotten stabbed down the street from where you live definitely puts things into perspective. It forces you to remember how dangerous it is to live in East London; especially for black boys around my age. However, being born and raised as a black British person in East London definitely builds character. It makes you grateful for every opportunity that comes your way and constantly reminds you not to take things for granted, because that wrong place wrong time stab victim, god forbid, could have been you. I’m not saying all of this for the shock factor, it’s just an all too real reality that I forget I live in sometimes. I guess it’s the fact that since my time at Eastbourne college is coming to a swift end, its reminding me that East London is now once again my one true home and I need to come to terms with living here full time again; which means learning to love and hate everything that comes with it.
DAY 62. 18/05/2020
Dear diary,
I’ve spent a lot of time in these diary entries complaining about everything I hate about quarantine and how alone it makes me feel at times. But I realised it’s not a fair representation of my lockdown experience as a whole. Because sometimes I have good days, really good days and I get so swept up in them that I don’t get a chance to sit down and write about them. I've spent a lot of time at home with my family and I haven’t been able to do that for a while, since I’m normally away at school. It’s been a good chance to reconnect.
Another surprising outcome of lockdown life is that I’ve actually taken the time to get to know the people on my university group chats. Normally this would never happen because we should all be stressed and focused on passing exams. But since that’s gone and being able to see our normal friends every day is out of the picture; we’ve actually taken the time to become friends with people that’ll be starting the next chapter of their lives with us. People that we’ve only met over the phone. For all the hate surrounding technology, this really feels like a real plus to me.
By Morola Oyefesobi