A Virus, A Girl, and Some Pixels: Lockdown Memoirs of Elisha Sayo

 A Virus, A Girl, and Some Pixels: The Lockdown Memoirs of Elisha Clare Sayo

NOW PLAYING; SUNDAY BEST - Surfaces

‘Aye feeling good, like I should~’

Tiktok songs blare from my classmate’s phone, filling the room with pop tunes as they dance along in front of the camera. It was a normal March afternoon, our grade 7 selves are preparing for a recognition ceremony. Unfortunately, it never came.

News of a virus is already floating around, but this time it finally landed. From simple reminders to wear masks to now a two-week long class suspension. Our naive selves are overjoyed — Finally! There’s no classes for quite some time! Little did we know how much this very event would change our lives.

From two weeks to three, to four, and to five — the resume of classes never came, and we all just woke up with the news of an abrupt halt of the school year. No ceremonies, no goodbyes, just a sudden stop.

NOW PLAYING; NEVER MET! - CMTEN, Glitch Gum

‘Threw all my money on a trivial video game!’

The entire country — and by extension, the world, was shaken with the rapid spread of COVID-19. The little red dots on the news show blip into existence, covering the digital map of our world. The concept of a lockdown or quarantine was something that’s not new, but at the same time it felt so foreign in a country like the Philippines, because the hustle and bustle of the fast-paced life is suddenly put to a pause.

Granted, all I thought about was how much free time I’ll have in my hands with these recent developments (don’t be mad, I was young you know?). This was the age of Tiktok, the rise of mainstream video games and the boom of Discord and various online platforms that kept people in touch. If I were to be honest, these times were filled with a mosaic of random things that kept people sane while quarantined in their houses — it’s an amusing selection if you ask me.

Personally, my choice in the pile of trends that suddenly popped out are video games. I’m already acquainted with some titles even before the pandemic hit but I got more into it when I had no choice but to be stuck in my house with a phone and an outdated laptop. I got heavily invested in Genshin Impact with its cool animations and unique gameplay — not an ad, swear. I was also heavy into PVP games like Mobile Legends and Valorant, though I never got to play the latter properly because of my laptop issues, oops. Communication-based games too like Among Us boomed, probably because people are subconsciously looking for the interaction they are deprived of.

Countless hours, countless friends, but thankfully — just countable purchases of in-game items, nothing too crazy.

Hours spent talking and laughing on Discord, temporarily tunes out the buzzing of the television about the virus cases spiking up. I immersed myself in the fantasy worlds and suddenly, it doesn’t feel as bad. The world built on pixels became my fortress in the bleak reality I was facing.

And of course, my friends who held my hand along the way.

NOW PLAYING; SUPALONELY - BENEE

‘La, la, la, la lonely ~ (Supalonely!)’

Days trickled into months, and I became slowly accustomed to living my life in pixel. Online classes were introduced, new video games came out, Tiktok flourished further… you can even say that I became so chronically online.

My prior excitement turned into indifference. This was boring. I couldn’t focus in class and I couldn’t take the Gmeet calls seriously. My back always aches on staring at screens and I have developed a habit of just mindlessly scrolling. Yeah, stuff like that really comes out when you’ve been cooped for long. Day by day, my socialization skills deteriorated and I built a preference for just staying alone.

But then again, there’s always a beacon, a lighthouse in the dark voyage. The silly calls from friends, the yelling when we’re about to be wiped out on a rank-up match and the spam messages from friends when you’re about to be late for online classes. The simple things.

This is where I realized the importance of staying in touch. That if I let the loneliness consume me wholly — I’d succumb to it, no returns. 

And maybe that is why I thought of writing this, because I wanted to think of them, to remember them. And despite the sting of ‘Last online XX days ago” and the gray offline dot on Discord, I wanted to keep them with me.

“To whoever this may concern (you know who you guys are), this is the girl from that one ranked session, the girl spamming the Discord music bot and the girl you may only know in pixels, speaking — hopefully not for the last time.”

“Maybe we have all outgrown our friendships and that we now have better things to do than to hop on a video game and play till 4am, but I hope you all know that I cherished the time we spent and I wish you nothing but the best in your lives.”

Let’s all find each other again, yeah?