When COVID-19 came crashing into my life, I was in the middle of working on my thesis at the Corcoran College of the Arts and Design in Washington, D.C. It was the week before spring break when other schools, like American University and Georgetown University, were announcing their plans to shift classes online. We soon followed.

My commute to campus was eliminated and everything revolved around working at my kitchen table. I share a studio with my girlfriend, Carrie, in the Adams Morgan neighborhood. She moved into the apartment in February just before the first-known case hit the United States. The first days were an adjustment: learning to share a workspace, cooking area, workout floor, meditation zone, and sanitizing location. We often clashed, fighting over time and space. This was all new for us, especially when we couldn’t go about our normal life.

We found our quiet time, her’s being reading cookbooks and yoga classes, and mine being photo walks. After classes, I roamed the empty streets of Washington looking for scenes that resembled what I was feeling, lonely and quiet. I walked through George Washington’s campus, which during these times, would usually be full of students, staff, and visitors. But where food trucks once smelled of grilled meats and gasoline from generators, was not desolate as the trucks sat idle and collecting traffic tickets. Where students once played frisbee on the quad had turned into a COVID-19 drive-through testing site. Student life didn’t exist on campus anymore.

It’s been six weeks since I began quarantine and social distancing. In mid-April, I visited Richmond to cover the Reopen Virginia as a student journalist. I haven’t been around so many people in a long time. It was a strange feeling to see hundreds of people all together in one place. No one tried to avoid me on the sidewalk. Cars blocked traffic and honking filled downtown. I parked only two blocks away from the congestion, but the atmosphere was drastically different, quiet and still. This was the second rally Virginians held in hopes to get Governor Ralph Northam to re-open the state’s economy.

While I can’t see my loved ones or friends in-person, I’ve remade connections with long-lost friends. We talk more often and ask how we are all doing – no, not the regular “hope you’re well” remarks, but a real, genuine “how are you?”

As a second-semester, second-year graduate student, most of my work is post-production. I’ve been working on an edit of my thesis work focused on Asian American boyhood, cutting video, and building a project website. Having virtual classes can be hard, especially for visual-based classes like photography. Online critique can feel impersonal through a webcam and talking about photobooks without touching them is not satisfying. We’re making the best out of learning remotely, but I’m left wanting more.

I’m a New Yorker. I was born-and-raised there, and all of my family still lives in the boroughs, including my mom who is a healthcare worker. We text every day, usually chatting about the day’s agenda, food supply, and state of COVID-19 in the world. The usual now. She was acting strange for a few weeks, quieter than her normal helicopter parenting. One day she texted me with some relief about why she was so nervous, she was exposed to two COVID-19 positive patients and was waiting for the inevitable infection, which never came.

I have a lot of fear during this pandemic, but none other than someone hurting me because of my identity. There have been hundreds of recorded cases of xenophobic attacks on Asian Americans across the United States. The attacks make me want to hide myself from the world and not show my true self, it’s something Asian Americans do often as we balance the duel identity. Andrew Yang wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post about how Asian Americans are supposed to “embrace and show our American-ness.” Honestly, after 27 years of fighting to prove that I belong in this country, I still fear being told to “go back where I came from.”