By Briar Pronschinske
Senior, English Major, IUPUI
“I’m pretty sure all of us would go back to in-person classes if we could,” my teacher replies during a check-in after a student complains about struggling with Zoom classes. “Actually,” I interject, “As a disabled person, I’ve actually found these Zoom classes really helpful. It can be hard for me to make it to class in person on a bad day, but now I just have to turn on my computer.”
When COVID first shut things down in March 2020, my college classes moved from in-person to online. I got a call cancelling my endoscopy. And my trips to the grocery store now merited a complex set of sanitation steps due to my germaphobia. While my asthma and brain fog made me anxious about catching the virus, I didn’t feel particularly at risk like my immunocompromised disabled friends did. As a whole, nothing really changed for me.
In 2019, I’d moved back home after failing out of a semester of college because I was mostly bed bound for the final three weeks due to my Fibromyalgia and Orthostatic Hypotension flaring up in an inconvenient combo of muscle weakness and nausea that made it difficult for me to stand. Post-move, I was again struggling with school due to symptoms of my chronic illnesses, and I didn’t really have friends in the area. I didn’t have a job because the last time I’d tried applying, I applied to 40 places and only got one call back despite having job experience and positive recommendations. A friend of mine who works in hiring told me they probably threw out my application as soon as I checked “prefer not to disclose” on the disability box, despite it being technically illegal to toss them. I was flat broke, living with my parents, and lonely.
Loneliness is a common disability experience. In fact, studies show that at least 40 percent of those with a debilitating disability or chronic disease say they experience loneliness and social isolation. Our issues can make it hard for us to access public places, whether that’s because we’re limited by physical inaccessibility, pain, or anxiety. The isolation of disabled people is rarely considered by society, so fewer accommodations are made than are needed.
If anything, when COVID hit, things became easier for me. I no longer had to make the 40-minute commute to class a few days a week. More food places offered delivery. Events I wouldn’t have normally been able to attend became available to me virtually. My teachers assigned less work and became more lenient with assignment deadlines. And people were so desperate to connect with others that the online communities I was in flourished.
Animal Crossing New Horizons had come out at the perfect time, and although I, a long-time fan of the series, couldn’t afford the game, I loved watching it become a community sensation. In a way, this new COVID world was paradise. I no longer had to struggle to go to classes. I had no job I was missing. Any events in my area were things I couldn't go to anyway because I was broke. And I didn’t really miss my friends more than usual because they all lived so far away that I had to make special trips just to visit them.
But people around me were really struggling with the changes. I started to watch my friends and classmates grow listless and depressed, struggling to complete work or interact socially. They started to act, well, like me.
I should have felt sympathy for them. And I did, truly, but a part of me couldn’t help but ask why now? Why did it take a global pandemic for people to understand and sympathize with how I’d been feeling all along? Everyone else was struggling so much, but this was just my life. Why was everyone having such a hard time with it?
I’m ashamed to say it took me a few months before I reached the obvious conclusion. If everyone else started experiencing depression like mine when their world started to look like mine, that probably meant that my depression was caused by the circumstances I’d been living in. But I didn’t have a way of changing those circumstances even if COVID hadn’t been a thing.
But in November of 2020, I somehow managed to get a job as a scanner at a digital storage company. Now I had the money to do things, go to events, see my friends. But although these opportunities should have now been possible, they weren’t because of COVID. And I’m finally on the same page as the rest of the country and feeling a sense of loss over everything I’m missing out on.
After the pandemic, a lot of the things I now miss will go back to normal, but a lot of other things won’t, and that’s a good thing. It’s unfortunate that it took a global pandemic, but society has finally stumbled into accommodating disabled people. Well, the ones who survived.
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