There are no words for how much devastation COVID has caused communities across the world over the past almost two years. I consider myself extremely lucky that I and my loved ones have all remained healthy, safe, and employed during the pandemic and I don’t take my good fortune for granted. I haven’t lost anyone or anything throughout this disastrous time, so I feel silly to even complain or mention missing pre-COVID life. I’m one of the lucky ones since 2020, but I often think about how much I miss my best friends in Waco and the city where I spent the four most formative years of my life. The last time I saw my best friends Jonathan and Lo was in 2020 when I flew back to Waco for two weeks for Jonathan and Urn’s wedding (I wrote about that wonderful time in this post). Lo and I were groomspeople and I felt the happiest I’d been in a while when I was there! Before I went back to Waco, I was in a horrible depressive episode (one of my worst) because I felt lost in the work world and I didn’t acclimate well to life after college. Because I kept telling my mom how generally upset I was and she knew I would miss my friends, she convinced me to extend my trip and stay with Lo a week extra than I originally planned. When I said bye to Lo on my last day in Waco I thought it would just be for another 8 months maximum, not the almost two years it’s actually been. Thankfully I’m in a far better place than I was in January 2020, but since I’m not traveling this year like my parents and I previously scheduled, I truly truly miss my dear pals despite our all day every day texts, Marco Polos, phone calls, and Teams chats. I’m thankful we have all of those forms of communication, but since my family and I were supposed to leave for our Texas trip today, I wanted to write about missing my people and one of my favorite cities in the world. Here’s hoping we’ll reunite soon.
