The Pandemic

Framing The Pandemic as an event, below I offer a review of COVID-19’s impact on disabled and high-risk communities through my own experiences living in Alaska and traveling to Newfoundland, set to the tune of pop musician Robyn's “Dancing on My Own.”It's a big black sky over my town.I walked into a classroom as a new PhD student at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador's St. John's campus fresh out of Alaska on September 6, 2023, to hundreds of bodies buzzing around—rushed, anxious, curious. Faces with mouths turned upward into smiles and laughs, friends embracing after a short separation, or brows furrowed with cautious anticipation. I entered the room quickly and found my seat nearest the exit—I had become accustomed to being in and out of places as fast as I could, a behavior I had picked up from three years in deep isolation. It was the first time in three years that I was included in a group of people—a cohort—and one that was not banded together because of COVID-19.COVID-19 was a disruptor—it changed everything for almost everyone, and for a minute there, we were all in it together—we were alone together. We were all unified under that big, black sky. Shortly after my arrival on campus, I drove to Port Union, Newfoundland, to attend Field School—a deeply immersive, three-week intensive, introduction to ethnography. Field School, for me, also served as an intensive reintroduction into socialization. There was a constant stream of conversation and movement, of having to squeeze past someone to get to my seat, of balancing interacting with others while taking my meal outside to eat it several feet away from anyone else. It was disorienting in a way I anticipated, but for which I had not known how to prepare. It was virtually non-stop and every day, and for most of it, I felt out of body—I had floated into the upper corner of the room and was looking down on myself, on everyone—I had become an outside observer.During Field School, I felt bombarded with energies assaulting my stillness almost daily. In the before times, although introverted, I had loved being around people. I reveled in sharing food and cooking together, in belly laughing and watching hours of bad reality TV, in serendipitous interactions with strangers, in creating and sharing art. My identity was bound to my relationships to others and how I participated in community. The black sky that followed me to Newfoundland had stolen my identity—or at least what I knew of my sense of self.Toward the end of Field School, I saw a glimpse of who I was, maybe still am, through our final presentation of a pop-up art installation. Walking through our exhibit, I felt the ghost of myself walking through hundreds of art exhibits I had participated in before. For the first time in years, I felt a tiny part of myself returning, and, for a moment, I floated down from the corner and re-entered my being. The dark clouds in the sky began to part and soften, light rain began to fall, and a glimmer of light began to peek through.I'm in the corner, watching . . . I am a disabled person. I experience comorbidity conditions that make me high-risk for severe or fatal outcomes if I get COVID-19; this is as much true today as it was in 2020. I can't take my disability off or ignore it or get over it. I am also high-achieving, high-functioning, and for the most part, my condition is invisible. I don't look sick most of the time, but I have experienced being near death. I have been so ill that I welcomed death. I know what it is like to catch a virus that disrupts your bodily functions, inflames your heart and lungs, and sends you to a hospital bed where you're hooked up to cords and machines and telling your friends they need to call your parents. I know what it's like when your best friend tells you that she had never before seen someone so close to death in real life.When I expressed my concerns of the potential outcomes of catching COVID-19 with friends or loved ones, I was repeatedly met with assertions of “But you really don't know what might happen if . . . ” This minimization of lived experience occurred regularly and was a common experience of disabled or high-risk people during the pandemic. This lack of empathy and understanding added to the physical isolation. I felt cornered into a trifecta of isolation: physical, social, and emotional.I just wanna dance all night.Recently, a friend sent me a beautiful, haunting version of “Dancing on My Own”—a piano cover of the eternally perfect Robyn song by the band Flying Fingers.1 It is subtle, slow-moving, and absolutely heart-wrenching. My last trip before moving to St. John's in 2023 to begin the PhD program was in April of 2019. I traveled with a friend to Hamburg, Germany, to see Robyn live in concert. We arrived to a packed theater, standing room only on the theater floor, and we were dressed for the occasion. We were surprised that most locals looked like they came from the office. It was a cultural difference we weren't anticipating as we stood there in platform shoes and glittering pants. After a glass of champagne, the crowd became a beautiful blur until “Dancing on My Own” came through the set list. My friend and I squealed with excitement, clasped hands like Thelma and Louise, and ruptured the song lyrics as loud as we could. It was as though each word carried memories that came from deep magma up through our feet and burst out of our bodies into the air. The crowd came into focus. Thousands of people united in shout-singing. It was a moment where we were all in it together. We overlooked the bumps and spills of someone's drink on your shoulder that would typically make you so annoyed because we were in it: unified, thrilled, euphoric. I'm surprised the floor didn't cave beneath us or that we didn't explode from sheer joy and togetherness.I'm right over here, why can't you see me?I drove from Alaska to Newfoundland—across the entire North American continent. An attempt to mitigate the risk of airlines and unmasked herds of people, of the anticipated looks and insults, and of having to explain that I wear a mask because of my heart condition—which is easier than saying I have multiple lifelong chronic illnesses that affect a majority of my body systems (I have also found that people respond more compassionately when an organ as vital as the heart is compromised). My life has become a constant assessment of risk and negotiation. I am wholly disconnected from that person jump-dancing to a song that an entire crowd of strangers was united in singing together, crying together, and in holding each other near. I have been dancing alone for 3 years. I have been in the corner where no one can see me this entire pandemic.Alaska is a place of extremes, and living there during the pandemic was hard for many reasons. The landscape can be wild and unforgiving, but the acts of aggression from those in my community communicated another kind of brutality. The mask debate was vitriolic; members of our city assembly in favor of the mandate received death threats and were confronted and picketed at their homes (Bergengruen 2022). Community members showed up in protest wearing Star of David badges, claiming mask mandates were equivalent to the Holocaust (Peiser 2021). On at least one occasion, someone brought a gun into the assembly chamber in a terrifying display of power (Palsha 2021). This anger was not confined to the city's assembly chambers; it erupted into the community like a geyser.Like many, I limited my engagement with the public during the height of the pandemic. I worked virtually, taught virtually, and attended virtual events. I had regular Zoom sessions with my parents and, in the beginning, socialized online. I saw friends, always outdoor with mutual masking. From the beginning of the pandemic, my wearing a mask in public sparked rage in some around me. While out walking the trails with a friend, a passerby shouted, “Fuck you!” while giving us the finger. When I pulled my mask up before passing someone else on a street, a man shook his head and shouted, “What?! Do you think COVID is in the air?!” On most occasions, when I ventured outside my home, I encountered some version of unkindness. A shaking head, a middle finger, shouted obscenities, my caution being mimicked and ridiculed, and, in one instance, someone blew smoke in my face.And I'm giving it my all . . . One of the many nights when the pandemic stole my sleep, I found myself scrolling social media and found Memorial University's Instagram page—envisioning what my life could be if I were there. I scrolled to a reminder for students before the upcoming semester, “Keeping everyone safe is a shared responsibility,” accompanied by a message reminding students that masks were still required at all times. Shared responsibility. I wept at the notion of a place that operated through collective care. That is where I should be, I thought. I submitted my application without any sense of certainty but with hope.The months after receiving my acceptance felt like a blur. I put in my resignation at work, renovated and rented my house, packed up my belongings to put in storage, and had a yard sale to get rid of everything else. I shed three years of muck. I flew my niece Alexis up to Alaska to do the drive with me; this was my first step in being in close proximity to someone unmasked. They wore a mask leading up to the trip, tested before, masked on the plane, and tested again when they arrived. When we took our masks off around each other in preparation for the weeklong drive to the US Midwest, where I would drop them off before continuing on my way, it was like a big, long exhale. Still scary but purposed. Our drive was beautiful and full of many classic road trip experiences. Alexis’ presence was soothing for me and, in one instance, helped to bring me off the ledge of panic when one of our lodgings was not as private, meaning as safe, as I thought.In the Midwest, I spent time with my parents, whom I hadn't seen in person since 2019. Days before leaving, my father decided to join me on the East Coast leg of my drive. We stopped to visit friends and family along the way, went to Niagara Falls, stopped in a sleepy town in Vermont that I loved but that my father thought was “creepy,” and visited Stephen King's mansion. I dropped him at the airport before venturing on, feeling both blessed to have had that time with him after years of distance and regretful that I didn't ask him to join me for the remainder of the trip. I crossed the border into Canada, loaded my car onto a ferry, and sailed the ocean toward Newfoundland.So far away but still so near.I am still masking. I am still cautious around others and minimize my public interactions. I have felt welcomed in St. John's and find that I am not shamed, nor am I alone, in wearing my mask. I can slowly re-emerge because of the privilege my disability awards me. My disability is dynamic; my symptoms ebb and flow—they may be subtle one moment and debilitating the next. The moments of subtlety enable me to live moments that others may perceive as normal. I must acknowledge that my disability experience is not that of all disabled persons, and I honor the ongoing experiences of my peers and colleagues who have not been able to coexist with others in our current systems in the ways in which I have.But you don't see me standing here.I knew the only way I could leave Alaska was to drive out, to remain in connection with the land that helped shape me into who I am and push me to where I may go. I needed to have something to look back to—to leave behind. Perhaps this knowing is because I am literal and driving away allowed me to watch the past get smaller and smaller behind me. Maybe it's because I am practical, and my car was a safer and more controlled environment than an airplane, or perhaps it's because I needed the time and length of the journey to help ease into a new life. As much as may be, I am here now. I am in a new home, land, and social environment. And I am still disabled. I am still at risk for severe outcomes should I get COVID-19. I still negotiate risk every single day. We began COVID-19 being in it together. We sewed masks in our kitchens, brought each other food and toilet paper, and watched movies in tandem with a running commentary. We were alone together. Now, a lot of us are just alone alone.The pandemic forced us to re-examine each of the threads woven into the fabrics of our personal and social ways of being—it brought us together and split us wide open. So now, what are the implications in our classrooms and our research? My experience of “The Pandemic” is ongoing, rather than a finished event. I am moving forward invisibly visible, and I wonder what barriers I will face. Will my options for fieldwork be limited? Will I encounter professors unwilling to make accommodations like video calling into class when needed? I also wonder what can happen if we choose to see our masks as invitations for deeper knowing rather than barriers to connection. Can we see ourselves, our classrooms, and each other as one large group—together even in our isolation?And I keep dancing on my own.I want to move forward with hope—present in the actions of individuals, in small acts of kindness, and in our power to forgive and heal. But I have experienced so much selfishness and disregard that my threads of hope are fraying. For now, my hope remains in the beauty of a weasel, white like snow, prancing along a snow berm in the crisp Alaskan landscape, a cattail sparkling with hoarfrost, and the moment a snow pile gets too heavy on its branch and thumps to the ground causing snow to disperse into a cloud that puffs up, up, up. For now, I will listen to the leaves crunch under my feet as I walk along the sidewalks in my new Newfoundland neighborhood. I will feel the rain splash sideways on my cheek and pause to catch my grounding when the wind gusts fiercely, forcefully, and fervently. I still see beauty in those places. I will revel those spaces. I will dance in those memories.A “beautiful blur” is a phrase I learned from Mazz O'Flaherty, whom I met while on a trip to Ireland in 2018. She told me that since losing her sight, to her, everyone looks like “beautiful blurs.” I honor Mazz in repeating her lovely descriptor.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.