Editor's note: Toriis blogging about rebounding from unemployment due to the coronavirus at My Rebound by FOX 17. She is currently working some as a bartender at the River Stop Saloon in Newaygo and hopes to go back to work soon as a cosmetologist at The Freckled Fawn in Fremont. She is married and lives in Fremont.
2020 was supposed to be my year! I had so many visions for the things I wanted to accomplish, and my family had so many cool milestones that we were going to go through together.
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But in March of 2020, my little world was put to a complete halt very quickly. COVID-19 hit Michigan fast and hard. All non-essential businesses were closed, and we were put on a stay-at-home order. Restaurants were closed for inside dining and moved to takeout only, and my salon job doing eyelash extensions was completely closed, leaving us to call all of our clients to re-schedule. It was nerve-wracking!
I have a mother that I can’t visit, because of her compromised immune system and rare lung disease, a little brother who was graduating high school in May and leaving for the Army at the end of summer. I have a sister with a newborn and another sister who is expecting her first child. How was I supposed to be there for my family when I couldn’t actually be there?
It was hard not being able to attend a graduation ceremony for my brother or throw him a celebration party. I had only seen my newborn nephew once before this, so I couldn’t visit and see his growth during his first few months of life. My younger sister is getting bigger by the day and couldn’t even have a baby shower to celebrate the expectancy of her first child, and she will have to go through the birth without her family there for support.
I also was dealing with health issues of my own, where I was recently diagnosed with endometriosis. So I am learning how to cope with the pain all over again after having surgery in December. All of my problems are so small compared to what is happening around us, but there were some big moments that we had to miss so far this year.
During all of this, I stayed home, with the exception of grocery shopping every other week or so. I took the time to deep clean my entire house more than once, and I made sure dinner was made every night. My husband worked for a foundry that was considered essential, so he continued to work up through all of this, so to him, I had become the perfect housewife, which he enjoyed!
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Now that it’s getting warmer, I’m able to spend more time outside with my dogs and do the yard work that I always dread. But even being stuck in my house for the two months while it was colder, I found ways to keep myself pre-occupied (Netflix and Hulu were a huge help with that).
But now it has become a waiting game for me. Sure, the restaurants can open up for takeout only, but it’s just not the same, and the sales can be pretty low sometimes. Salons are stuck in the middle and feeling like we’ll never open up again. Unemployment is still a mess and probably always will be. Hopefully soon we can all get the answers we’ve been looking for and our world can go on to our new “normal.” But until then, we’re all just along for the ride.