The Diary of a Stranger 3

22nd of May 2021

I didn't go to school on Thursday and Friday.
I'm sick. And I can't tell anyone that I'm sick. I can't tell anyone ecause it could be Covid, but I can't get tested because if I tested positive I don't know what my family would do.
It would be a mess. My dad wouldn't be able to work, my sister wouldn't be able to work and  my mom wouldn't be able to come back (she finally managed to leave to visit family, a trip that she had been waiting almost a year for).
I feel selfish for not getting tested, because what if I have it and infected someone at school? But I have no control over whether I get tested or not - my parents won't let me,  so I can't. Too much is at stake for us if I do.

All of this means that I have been lying to my friends constantly. I had to lie to them that I got tested back when I was a close contact, because if they knew that I never get tested, they would freak out. Even though I didn't have to get tested - I waited out my ten days of quarantine, and I had no symptoms back then, they would still be too paranoid about it, and say that I have to, I have to, I have to get tested, like I have any say in the matter. They would act like it's the end if the world - and maybe it would be - and there would be nothing that I could do.

So, I just lied to spare myself the effort of dealing with all of that.

Because I love my friends, or at least I try, but some of them can really be too much sometimes. Their parents send them to get tested, and my parents don't believe that the tests work. And I'm stuck in the middle, unsure of what to do. And lying is just easier, because I don't have to choose a side - I can just pretend to both sides that I chose theirs.
It might not solve the issue and the struggle that that causes me mentally, but it makes it all seemed to them as if there is no issue and no struggle in the first place.
Which is why, nobody apart from my family know that I'm sick. Which is why I have to make up excuses for as to why I'm not at school, and why I'm not going to hang out with my friends.

I don't really enjoy telling all of these little lies that I've had to tell to the people I love recently, so writing about all of these things honestly, without lying or pretending really helps me. Even if nobody ever reads this. Which might happen.
But if you are reading this right now, I want to let you know that I'm thankful.
I'm glad that I could get this weight off of my shoulders and share it with a stranger.

-Roses