Today marks exactly two years since I graduated high school.
Where has life gotten me?
I can't say I saw a worldwide pandemic on the horizon, but then again nothing in life really is predictable. Plans can be made. That doesn't mean they'll always follow through. That's why they are called "plans".
My end goal in this career, as a journalist, is to give the people, and the entities, that need a voice the most a platform. Turn thoughts into spoken words. Freeing the mind of the conflict it sometimes suffers from.
And that goal will be accomplished someday. Because no matter how difficult this career is, no matter how many rejections you receive, you should have a dream. Dreams, ironically, are what keep people awake.
I've been doing a lot of thinking about that. Dreams. Especially the ones you have at night. The ones that pinpoint our anxieties, that make us miss our loved ones more, that make us believe something is real so much we almost question reality.
And I think my nightmares, which lockdown has somehow raised in number, are telling me to stop thinking.
Not just letting go of the thoughts that make me feel trapped. But thoughts on myself in general. Stepping outside of that bubble of self-absorption we often find ourselves in.
What does this world, frightened by a virus we are desperately searching a vaccine for, look like for people who don't even know what a vaccine is? And no, I'm not talking about our babies or our children. We've brought them into this world, so we should be responsible in educating them about the core aspects of medicine. I'm talking about the lesser educated, those who lack essential resources, the individuals in countries most of us can't even locate on a map.
Because those are the people who will be suffering the most. And who need our attention more than ever.
It's safe to say that, for now, the country I live in is no longer a prisoner to the pandemic. Slowly, people are coming out lockdown - like wild animals from a long wintery hibernation. And our economy, which wasn't great before the coronavirus, is on the brink of disaster. But maybe we still have a chance at getting a good part of businesses back on their feet.
Families can see their loved ones, funerals can be held, restaurants can feed their communities, and we're allowed to explore territory beyond our own neighbourhoods. All things that - a year ago - we all took for granted.
But despite Italy's renowned suffering economy, it still isn't as bad as many countries who suffer for more than corrupt government. Many individuals in this world don't even have a home they could isolate in, many were on the run from conflict when the pandemic hit, and for the children of refugees - they might not even know what normal life will ever look like because of the terror they have been brought up into.
And yes, this pandemic has killed over a third of a million people. But we don't talk about the terror that people undergo everyday, the deaths that occur behind the scenes of government feuds. We don't talk about it because these wars don't personally affect us. We don't share a common enemy, like Covid-19 became for us, so why should we help them? Why should we hear about the horrors they go through? We're too far away so why care, right?
I think if this pandemic has taught us anything, it's that distance doesn't ensure safety. It's 2020, the world is more globalised than ever. In a fraction of a second we can impact more people on Planet Earth than were even inhabiting it a century ago. So maybe, instead of globalisation being a negative thing - which people blame for the circulation of the coronavirus - we should be taking advantage of it.
I don't want to write about the hardships of everyday life in lockdown anymore. I want to give people a voice. And reaching outside my bubble, looking beyond my horizon: that's the first step.