It’s all gone.

The world. 

The people. 

The world ended during the pandemic

So who are we? Why is time so different?

It’s all living like a dream.

Lucid? 

I’m not sure.

But now time is not the same. We are stuck in 2020, and yet it’s 2026, maybe 2025, who knows now. Is this an extended version of that year? Did we all die? Because how could we all not remember, or remember but not feel? Seven years have passed since then. 

Once upon a 2019, we were all sitting around doing what we do when you hear “global pandemic” on the news, Instagram, Facebook. Obviously, you don’t believe it. Like seriously, how many times were we told a pandemic or WWlll was starting?

Then we all got sick.

People actually died.

And life stopped. 

People went crazy and started dancing and making skits. We are not serious in life–, like, actually. And somehow that was normal. Death on one screen, jokes on the other. That’s all there was. 

The past went by in a haze. I feel like I will wake up one day, doing my homework, writing 2020 as on the date. Because wWhat do you mean we are almost a decade away from then?

Is this our seven minutes? The seven minutes they say you get when you die, when your whole life flashes before your eyes? Maybe we don’t know we are dead because we are reliving it. Maybe that is why time feels wrong. Maybe we are stuck replaying the last moment before everything fell apart.

No way, right? 

But sometimes it feels like I’m becoming aware during the end. Thinking too clearly for something that’s supposed to be over. 

We all ended in the pandemic. We never saw what was coming, and we were not prepared, not really. Everyone stocking up on toilet paper like that is what you need to survive.

We left school.

Work.

Life.

We told ourselves it was temporary. We said we would go back. But something did not come back with us when we returned. Time kept moving, but we didn’t move inside it.

Now we are surviving, not striving. Remembering, but notwithout feeling. Living, but not fully present.

And maybe that’s the truth we keep avoiding, 

Not that the world ended,

But that it changed so quietly we didn’t notice when we stopped living forward. 

Maybe the pandemic wasn’t the end of the world. 

Maybe it was the moment we learned how to exist

Without expecting more.