She does not envy the heat that radiates from their cores through their pores, onto their skin. She's always prided herself on her ability to feel cold at the tips of her hair as her heartbeat stills. Her core radiates the cold from the night air after another door was slammed shut in her face. She banged hard on the wood until her hands were raw, ignoring the sting of the wind slapping her skin within the storm of her mind. The winds have never been kind. They'd move fast making sure they cast the last of any memory of a happier time like grandma's water recipe with lemon and lime. The only water there is now is the tsunami of her thoughts crashing loudly against her brain, driving her insane. She is now reliant on music to make them silent for a moment to sneak a peek at the building so see if anyone has opened. But the door remains shut. She bangs harder the splinters cut deeper but even the window panes remain sealed. ` She can wail, scream, panic, repeat Her heart can shatter again and again Into smithereens, But her cries fall upon deaf ears There is no room for her… Her and her messiness. And the doors shall remain shut. She will remain broken And alone And cold Outside.

I am sitting on the porch and reading a book. My daughter is occupied with her new toy. Everything as usual, but for me somehow, indescribably, different… I remember perfectly well every single detail of that seemingly ordinary day. It was January 7th 2000. My boyfriend and I were sitting in his room and talking about our future. We had been together for five years. I had finished the faculty and started working as a nurse in the local hospital. He was a soldier. He was very ambitious. I liked the way he thought, moved, spoke… He made the world go round. He was very thoughtful, gentlemanly and lovely. We were head over heels in love. While we were talking about our plans, the phone rang. He picked up the phone. The conversation was short. Then, he turned to me and said, “I'll go to Afghanistan.” My face turned white and I was shivering more than ever. “Ah, yes…I mean ok”, I said. He was staring at me. That was a long gaze. Eventually, I opened my mouth to say something, but the lump in my throat didn't allow me. He leaned towards me and kissed me. A tear escaped at the corner of my eye. I was crying. Seven months later, he left. I felt as if he took everything with him leaving me bare. The days were longer and longer. And the time seemed to have stopped. Suddenly I wasn't feeling well. I had nausea every morning and constant temperature every night. I was pregnant and after eight months Helen was born. People were quick to gloat over my troubles. I was young, without a husband but with a daughter. The rumours spread rapidly but I didn't take a notice of that. I realised that I had everything – I had a daughter with the man I loved. It is January 7th 2004. The air is motionless, tepid and thick. Yes, that was how it smelled when we were together. Tired of reading I am looking ahead of me now. I see a man in a green-grey uniform moving towards us. I am standing with Helen beside me. The corners of my mouth are turning into a big smile. I am not alone!

Wake up. Eat. Work. Come home. Eat again. Sleep. Repeat. We're no different than conditioned zombies, trained to do whatever it is that keeps us sustained in life. Corporations trained us like dogs to do their bidding, and by the time we've accomplished our training for the day we are exhausted. Our minds are shut off and all we can think about is resetting. So, what happens when over a billion people across the nation are forced to stay home? Forced to come to terms with who they are and everything they can't be. To quarantine for the safety of themselves and their neighbors, but are we truly safe from ourselves? The demons that never cut us loose, or the suffocation that loneliness brings. We've all felt it. We are all struggling to deal with the isolation that quarantine prompts, as a pandemic is raging in the background, and all we can do is fight the war within ourselves. Some may bury in hobbies, while others ignore quarantine rules all together, and others focus on their social media platform. Either way, all we are doing is delaying the inevitable. Delaying what looking into ourselves may bring and finding out who we really are. Nobody wants to be alone, yet that is all we can be. It's not simple. This has been anything but a simple year. What everyone thought would be the best year of their life is just simply not. It's an entangled mess, full of controversy and hate. The thin line has been shattered between reality and what is not. People feel at a loss within themselves and there's no distraction to keep their mind from drifting into the dark. When you're alone, there's nothing and no one to stop you from committing the sinful acts you've pushed away. And there's nobody there to help you out of the murky waters your life has created. Nothing is ever simple. Quarantine is not simple. It's similar to sitting on the couch, watching t.v. while the world is on fire and it's on the brink of death. But what can you do? A conditioned corporate worker, forced to watch the cruelty that life can bring, pushing it out of your mind with labor and the same routine everyday. But, you're not anymore. Life isn't the same anymore. My life isn't the same. It's changed. The world has changed. In as little as six months my perception of how life should be has shattered. I'm forced to be alone, to feel. But, I don't want to. So, I continue and wait for fate to find me. All the while, I'm choking back on hopelessness. I've been isolated since the pandemic began. Alone and distraught. I've been forced to face my own demons and lurking shadows. Forced to see myself through a different lens, because I have nothing to distract me. The words “struggle,” and “lost” can help identify what I've been going through. It's been quiet and not even the sounds of the outside world are enough to comfort me. I crave human interaction and to feel again. Alone with my thoughts has never been ideal. I prefer the conditioned labor and routine to occupy my day. Instead, I've been doing nothing. I had started to feel numb, like my existence was insignificant in this world. But that's not true. We all play an important role in the universe, whether it's fate or our own path. We create something. History. I've realized that living in quarantine does not mark the end of your goals, or your accomplishments. Quarantine can potentially be a way to find yourself. Like how I've started to find myself through words. Words led me to self-discovery. My life used to feel meaningless and ineffective, until I found writing. It was a way to freely express myself without the judgement of the world. My words can convey hope, as well as destruction. They can convey love and hatred. However, it is all about your perception. If you allow the cruel path life has set out for you to sink you under water where you slowly suffocate and drown under disappointment then you'll never be free. You'll never be free of the conditioned life you've been taught to have since a child. What you've been trained to perceive, you can change it. Change the way you've been born to see the world and understand that your words have power to alter things. I have felt everything you have felt. Because in the end, we are not alone. We experience things together. While I may look out of my window and see a different landscape than you, we still have linked thoughts and emotions. It may not happen simultaneously, but they are shared. We empathize, sympathize, and care. That is the heart of humanity. Quarantine can be scary and lonesome, but it can also be self-serving in the fact that you can be uplifted and live your own life, if even for awhile. You don't have to succumb to the rules of everyday expectations. Instead, you get to be yourself through discovery and self-love. Learn how to empower your life and live it the way you want.

As I sit here in this world I wonder to myself why am I here? I sit in a field of thought on this hill I use to meet my companions. If we are to live there must be meaning, everything has to have a purpose that's the whole point is it not? I am of no use to anyone. I am invisible. I am sent to a land to be imprisoned and yet there was no trial. No way for me to show my worth. In this place Of exile I am alone. so why am I still here why do i still sit here in my special spot and wait. I sigh and lay back on the dead grass. feeling the once bright and lively needles now browned prickle my pale skin. Looking into the clouds I see the gray I can feel it, the weight of despair lay upon them. I feel like the sky is my only friend I feel at peace with the clouds. That's why I wait here for them. They have so much purpose in the world so why do they always seem to mourn. 'Why are you upset' I whisper to them. Like everything else in my life they just move on with no answer. Leaving me here it the bitter quietness to ponder why I am not enough. There is no point to me being awake now that they have drifted away again, so I fall into slumber. As the sky lightens up, the bright rays dance across my skin and yet I feel nothing anymore. I wake up from my constant nightmares, my body now on fire from the hell I live in that world i try to calm down. I despise sleep it brings nothing but more hurt. Dreams are meant to bring you peace my night terrors bring me bitter torment that eats away at me and forms a hole in the lively girl i know i can be. If someone would give me the chance. I sit up and hug my knees to my chest and wait. The clouds are the one thing that return. Yet even this one thing that i feel no rejection from always drifts away from me. Like everyone else they move on leaving me behind without telling me what i can do to make them stay. Leaving me to wonder what I did wrong why does everyone walk away from me without even a glance in my direction. what did I do I... I can change. If that's what it takes. I look to the sky. The air holds the heavy scent of rain, but yet the clouds are sparse today must be my imagination or just my desperate hope for then to return. I look down at my bare feet in the dirt. So cold. My thoughts attack ne once more. Saying to me that I have nobody. Why am I still alive. I want this to end. “Please..” i mutter I bite my cheek so hard so I won't cry. Crying won't help me this pain will never stop so I won't waste my tears on something that will never change. I taste copper, I put my fingers to my mouth and there is blood. As I stare at the crimson splattered across my numb fingertips, I feel a drop on my nose. Then another hits my hand as I look to the sky I see my friends all moving towards me. I feel the anger growing inside at myself. They can't see how pathetic I am for being tortured by their absence.I won't let them. I quickly rise to my feet and look straight up into the face of those gray faces. To the clouds that now watch me. I can't take it, I scream and holler at them. 'Why do you leave me and why do you let me blame myself for it ? I'm not going to do it anymore i can't. I won't.” I fall on my hands and knees. I grip the remains of the grass in my hands and dig my fingers into the earth ' i.. Can't do this anymore... Please, please just go away and don't come back again! It's killing me to see you come and then leave without a word. I'm .. I'M ALWAYS ALONE! So leave me here as you always do, don't come back this time' I didn't even realize the tears now running down my cheeks and falling to the ground. 'I don't want to get back up.. Anymore.” As I sit there I slowly notice the drops started to fall and I know what's next to come The skies open up on me and the rain pours from the sky 'Why do you cry.. Do you pity me?' As I stare back at the sky I realize my friend feels my pain, they always shared it. When the pain became too much to carry myself that's when they were there. To remind me to get back up and keep escaping that imprisonment because i do have a purpose and always will. I curl up on the now soaked ground and stare upward. Now Letting my tears stain my cheeks and I remind myself they will always return to me and I know I'll never cry alone.

I don't know where to start...My name is Nidiyah Thompson, I was given this name on October 22, 2001, by my mother Gloria Lewis, and my father Alvin Thompson. Growing up wasn't easy in my family, my father spanked us a lot while my mother worked to put food on the table. My dad wasn't very opened, and he was a mean man who didn't know how to raise us right... every since I was little, I had an active imagination even now I still do. When I was a child, I would call out to my mother calling her "Nani." ever since I was a child, I had a speech problem, and couldn't say certain words right. I grew up with my siblings, Bruce Lewis who is currently 22 at this time, my older sister Daysha Thompson, and my younger sister Arianna Thompson. Over the course of my life, I sometimes wonder what it would be like to go back in time, to change some events in my life, so I could just have the family back, but I realized that life isn't a fairy-tale. I learned thing don't just end with a happily ever after, no matter what we do... it's sad really... there were times I remember I had a lot of fun with my father and mother. my favorite color is black because it reminds me of when we had fun in the dark, I know it's stupid but it does. Sometimes when the lights turned off, we had so much fun playing different types of games in the dark, we were a family.... my mother cooked my favorite food, spaghetti, chili, everything I ever loved. now in my life, I don't have my dad anymore... I resent him for what he has put my mother through... but I have to thank him for getting me into writing, that is the only thing I can ever thank him for. so this is my life, I'm sorry I can't offer more, I know this isn't worthy of winning.... but I have to try... we're on the verge of getting evicted and we have no food in the house... My mom has done so much for me, and my siblings... I just want to help her, I need to help her.