Nobody warned me that the shakiness from your hand could be the reason you end up with fringed bangs. It wasn't a TikTok or a YouTube tutorial, but a desperate need to regain some kind of control over my life again.

A part of me knew that once the sharp edge of my scissors met my box-dyed, damaged hair it still wouldn't stop the virus from spreading. It wouldn't let me rightfully walk across a stage to get the degree I spent years working towards. It wouldn't allow me to go home and see my family and friends in my hometown (Broward County, Florida is continuously growing in the number of positive cases for COVID-19). It wouldn't change anything at all, except a portion of my hair would be abnormally shorter. And even this very moment, when the scissors slipped not on my command, it was a reminder that everything is temporary—including this pandemic.

One way to take control of this pandemic is through our actions and abiding by the Center for Disease Control's advisories to flatten the curve of infection. The very things in our lives that granted us any sort of normalcy, will continue to get canceled or cease to exist unless we take this viral pandemic more seriously.

How does one even begin to try to take control of something that is inadvertently out of their control in the first place? We were expected to uproot our entire lives and create a makeshift of it—"as normal as possible"—with little to no guidance, assurance, or any sense of accountability. The commute I've grown to love with a fiery passion during morning traffic, the colorful commentary from my peers during inappropriate times, the playlist of new content from my podcasts (COVID-19 content-free, of course) are all things I don't have control over, yet I would much rather deal with all of that than this viral pandemic any day.

You're not alone in this.

Everyone else is going through the exact same thing in their own way, and we're all trying our hardest. How one decides to cope with this is on them, at their discretion. During these times it's not only important to remember that this is temporary, but we should be kinder to one another, more patient, and understand the fact that none of this is normal, so give us a break.