What is a normal life? Is it going to school, getting a job and then working for the next 40 years non-stop? Or is it subject to each person’s opinion?

I had what you would call a normal life. Every day I would struggle to get up at 7 am → get ready for school → come back home → do homework → exercise → more homework → sleep. With 7.5 hours of school, 3 hours of homework, 2 hours of revision, my day was spent up by my responsibilities, barely having time for myself those 5 days a week. Yes, I had the weekends but somehow those would get filled up by going shopping or (maybe) sleeping over at my friend’s house. Sometimes we had guests over or I had homework to finish or to revise for another test. Life was pretty stressful.

Once a year I would go to Romania – where I’m originally from – to visit friends and family but even that was stressful. You see, we didn’t have enough time to visit everybody and there was always at least 1 issue to solve. It felt too rushed! When we got home there was a sigh of relief but we also already missed the sun at the same time. The other 3 weeks of my 6 week holiday were mainly spent watching TV or the rain pour on my bedroom window. I would also talk to friends, who were on holiday elsewhere, on insta or snap because we didn’t all go abroad at the same time.

My life was already decided for me by the system: got to school → get a job → buy a house → retire but I didn’t really care. In fact I never actually knew if that was my dream life.

But all of this changed. In March 2020.