Ten
In March 2020, we witnessed the world shut down. For most people, it was a jarring shift—stay home, avoid crowds, no more dinner parties, no more carefree runs to the grocery store. For me, it became an unrelenting isolation that would stretch into the longest 16 months of my life. As someone with a compromised immune system, I couldn’t take the same risks others could. While some navigated the pandemic cautiously, eventually dipping back into the world, I remained alone in my apartment, shielded from a virus that could and would kill me. It was as if the walls closed in, day by day, month by month, suffocating the very life I had worked so hard to build.
Before all of this, I was active. I hiked, practiced yoga, pushed my body despite its limitations. I was stubborn, maybe reckless in my pursuit of movement, determined to feel like myself no matter what chronic illness tried to take from me. My body, always fragile but familiar, was my own. Yet, isolation changed everything. Movement disappeared, replaced with stillness. I became a bystander to my life, watching it crumble from the inside out.
Isolation wasn’t just lonely. It was a sickness in and of itself. The longer I stayed hidden from the world, the more my body deteriorated. Days bled into weeks, then into months. The silence was oppressive, the solitude endless. My joints stiffened, my muscles weakened. It felt like my body was aging decades in mere months, and soon, I felt like I was trapped inside a 100-year-old shell. Every day, I woke up feeling weaker than the last, my body betraying me in ways I never thought possible.
The pandemic didn’t just worsen my physical health—it shattered my spirit. And I wasn’t alone in this experience. Disabled and chronically ill people everywhere were suffering in ways few could understand. For those of us already living with compromised health, isolation wasn’t a protective measure—it was a devastating blow. Our communities, our support systems, our fragile sense of normalcy were ripped away. Many of us couldn’t access necessary medical care, couldn’t see our doctors, couldn’t do the things that kept us functional. And while the able-bodied world politicized the “inconvenience” of quarantine, our lives unraveled in slow, painful silence.
The truth is, isolation makes you sicker. Prolonged isolation can exacerbate preexisting conditions. Studies have shown that social isolation and loneliness are linked to a higher risk of a debilitating health issues—heart disease, cognitive decline, anxiety, depression. For the disabled and chronically ill, the effects are magnified. Without community, without touch, without the simple act of being seen, our bodies suffer. The longer we remain isolated, the harder it is to recover, to regain any semblance of health or strength.
I saw it in myself, and I saw it in my friends—fellow disabled people who were trapped in their own homes, trying to navigate a world that was already inaccessible, now completely out of reach. We lost more than just time during those 16 months. We lost mobility, resilience, hope. Some of us didn’t make it. Many of us who did are still clawing our way out of the dark.
I remember the day I tried to walk around the block for the first time after months of isolation. My legs fought me. My joints screamed in protest. What had once been an easy stroll became a marathon. I made it halfway before I had to turn back, defeated. It was the first of many realizations that the body I had once known was gone, and I wasn’t sure if I’d ever get it back.
What saved me wasn’t a miracle cure or a sudden return to health. It was community. Slowly, cautiously, I reconnected with others—through virtual support groups, through text messages and phone calls, through shared stories of survival. Even in isolation, we found ways to reach each other, to remind one another that we weren’t alone. We grieved together, we raged together, we fought against the crushing loneliness together. And in those connections, I found strength.
It wasn’t the strength of a healthy body or an unbroken spirit, but the strength that comes from knowing you’re part of something bigger than your pain. It was the realization that, despite everything, we still had each other.
The pandemic taught me many things, but the most important lesson was this: disabled and chronically ill people need each other. We thrive in community, in connection, in the shared understanding that comes from living in bodies that don’t always cooperate. Isolation is dangerous for us. It strips us of our humanity, our health, our hope. But together, we can survive. Together, we can heal.
As I sit here, writing this, I’m still not the person I was before the pandemic. My body is still weak in ways I never anticipated. But I am part of a community now—a community that sustains me, that lifts me up when I feel like I’m failing, that reminds me every day that I am not alone. And that’s what keeps me going.
To anyone reading this who is chronically ill, disabled, or struggling in isolation, I urge you: find your community, in whatever form it takes. Find your people. Our lives depend on it.
