by Katy

There’s a world where COVID-19 doesn’t exist. There’s a world where classes are held in the classrooms and not over calls, there’s a world where one doesn’t need a mask when outside, there’s a world where the pandemic didn’t spread so wide and affect so many people. There’s a world where COVID-19 was worse. There’s a world where the disease was even more deadly and even less people followed the regulations. There’s a world that more closely resembles the one found in Station Eleven where electricity and civilization have collapsed, where technology has become a thing of the past.

There’s a world where my family decided not to adopt one of the kittens that my sister’s friend found and, worse, there might be a universe where those kittens were never found, but I hope that the mother didn’t abandon them in that universe at least. There’s a world where I wouldn’t have been home to help raise the kitten since I would have been on campus instead of at home.

There’s a world where I got the help, the therapy, the medication I needed as a kid, but there’s also a world where I never got help, where I never went to therapy, where I never started taking medication, and I instead stopped trying to become better. There could be a world where I never met the people I know and care for now even if that world is not one that I’d want to live in. There’s a world where just one choice of mine – the decision to come to Salve, the decision to start playing D&D with my partner and friends, the decision to set my laptop wallpaper as a certain character that the first friend I made at Salve recognized back when we were just freshmen sitting next to one another in class – could have changed the course of my life and the relationships I have.