Author Spotlight
Sophie Henschel
Leaving her vacation in Seaside Fla., excited about her new tan lines and freckles, junior Bella Wolfe was skeptical about the dangers of the recent COVID-19 outbreak and post-spring break quarantine. She prayed it would blow over in a month or so — little did she know this would be the last time she would come in direct contact with non-family members or see the inside of any establishment for the majority of the next eleven months.
Wolfe was diagnosed at age eight with Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis, an autoimmune condition that causes her joints to swell when she contracts any sort of virus. Starting at her ankles and moving up towards her hip bones, the disease often immobilized her as a child.
After the first month of lockdown, Wolfe and her family got a call from her doctor informing them that if she were to contract the virus, there would be a possibility of her internal organs swelling just as her joints do, potentially causing a heart attack. Since this placed her in the high-risk category, she was left in full isolation until further notice, which proved to be more taxing than Wolfe could have ever imagined.
“We got the call, and that’s when I was like, ‘Oh, this is real life, this is actually happening,’ and I definitely wish I would’ve realized it sooner,” Wolfe said. “I needed to start doing what I could not only [to] protect myself and my family, but other people too.”
When the Kansas City weather got warmer, lockdown let up and Wolfe’s peers began resuming normal activities like dining in restaurants, going on vacations and hanging out with a small bubble of friends. But Wolfe stayed in lockdown. Aside from her family and the masked-up-20-feet-apart driveway chats with friends that occurred twice a month, she was on her own — leaving her with nothing but her own thoughts.
Still stuck in the evening family walks, whipped coffee, “Tiger King” phase of lockdown, it was hard for Wolfe to watch all of her friends out and about with little regard to what was happening in the world around them.
“I said to my sister so many nights in a row, ‘I just don’t get why people don’t care,’” Wolfe said. “Seeing people’s Instagrams, seeing people go out, seeing people’s stories, seeing all the vacations, it was hard because I was thinking, ‘I am sitting here because of these people.’”
As a 16-year-old girl with this looming cloud of disappointment, sadness and confusion leering over her shoulders, she decided it was time to talk to a professional. Wolfe began virtually meeting with a therapist who is also in full isolation. According to Wolfe, it’s extremely reassuring to talk her emotions out to someone. Even if it’s not a deep talk, ranting about her day can relieve stress.
On top of meeting with a therapist, she and her family knew she needed a friend. A real, in-person friend. That’s where senior Lily Utt came along.
Diagnosed with common variable immunodeficiency and severe asthma, Utt and Wolfe were living in very similar situations. Having been friends for three years now through East theater, the two realized on FaceTime one day that they could probably be able to see each other safely considering they were both in full isolation.
“Initially I was uncomfortable, but then [Wolfe’s dad] and I discussed it, and frankly, the benefits of the mental and emotional support for the two of them outweighed any risk,” Wolfe’s mom Cati Wolfe said. “It was a calculated risk we had to take, and we knew at that point that they both needed friends.”
The two became closer than ever since they began hanging out late in the summer. Wolfe claims that the two rely on each other for a sense of normalcy and relation to another teenager.
“I don’t think that I’d be able to do this if I didn’t have her as a friend,” Utt said. “It sounds horrible, but sometimes I think I’m lucky that she is as vulnerable as I am because that lets us be able to be there for each other and have a support system because obviously everyone’s been impacted by this situation in one way or another, but there are not a lot of other people our age that are in the same boat as we are.”
Wolfe relies on Utt to keep her in check when she starts to spiral with anxiety and frustration in regards to all the hangouts and brunches she hears her friends talk about on FaceTime, or seeing all of the notorious vacation posts on Instagram.
While Utt has been a huge help for Wolfe living her day-to-day life locked in her house, the confusion regarding why the world around her was not taking this as seriously as she was got to be too difficult for her to bear. Spending countless nights sitting in bed on the phone with her sister Haley, now back at college, she couldn’t wrap her mind around why her peers weren’t making the sacrifices she was.
Day after day she felt further and further from society, wishing she could be screaming East chants at pep rallies, shopping with her friends, just sitting in a restaurant booth, but she knew that she wanted to protect people. She knew that there were more important things.
She believes that Zoom calls with her therapist, seeing Utt in person and the return of Haley from college are the things that pulled her out of the lowest mental health spot she’s been in since the start of the pandemic.
“The biggest thing I worry about now is transitioning back to normal when that happens,”
“The biggest thing I worry about now is transitioning back to normal when that happens,” Wolfe said. “I haven’t been inside a restaurant in a year, I haven’t been to a party in a year, just the things that I would normally do every single weekend, I think it’s those things that it’s going to be weird conditioning back to.”
Even in isolation, Wolfe knows her supportive friends will welcome her with open arms once things are back to normal. Before that can happen, the vaccine must roll out to the majority of the population. According to Cati, the family has gotten conflicting reports on when Wolfe is to receive the vaccine
“Sitting at home watching [the development of the vaccine] every day took a long time, but for a vaccine to be rolled out this fast is just so awesome,” Wolfe said. “When I started to see people I know and people’s parents I know getting it, it was really cool. It just felt like it was moving a little closer to home.”
Although Wolfe and her family have had many highs and lows this year with their isolation, at the end of the day, they recognize that they do not have it as bad as some. The family strongly emphasizes that they are fully aware that while they have hardships, and they are isolating more than most, others have it far worse, and that is what keeps them going.
Leave a Reply