During quarantine, our minds swirl with a thousand thoughts, images, and pieces of information, mixing into a kaleidoscope of emotions. Most of us look back with nostalgia at what we've lost, risking the chance to pause and reflect.
Yet many of us have already lived through forced quarantines brought on by circumstance, by life itself.
Not a virus to defeat, but illnesses we reckon with every day, every hour. A disabled person is plunged into a muted, sealed world—one of white coats worn by doctors and nurses, of unfamiliar medical terms. There are countless disabled people for whom a signed declaration is not enough to go outside, who cannot jog or walk a dog because they live in public housing units without a wheelchair-accessible elevator, or whose bodies are immobilized, or simply because society, fearful of difference, has forgotten them entirely. They find themselves with no one for whom it is worth the effort to leave home. Many others, marked by what social convention calls different, voluntarily confine themselves indoors, afraid of the looks that mask people's judgment—a burden too heavy to bear.
Then there are those hospitalized for treatments that seem to have no end. I was seven during my first long hospital stay, my first quarantine from the world. It was 1993, before social networks existed. I spent my days in my room with my mother, and went to school in a classroom with two students: me, learning syllables and apostrophes, and Marco, fourteen, studying incomprehensible mathematics. Now and then Marco and I kicked a foam ball down an empty corridor. Then they operated on him before me, and I lost even that small escape.
Silence can be unbearable—it's when the deepest questions erupt from our unconscious. I can still hear that insistent echo: "Why did this happen to me?" In these days, I think we're all asking: Why?
There is no answer. There is an opportunity to face yourself in a society that usually devours time. Now, that question is no longer yours alone.
The silence breaking in these days can be a wellspring of inspiration and reflection. Don't waste it.
And don't forget the work of doctors. For a disabled person, the constant contact with medical professionals from the very beginning of their different journey makes it clear at once how indispensable doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, and all hospital staff truly are. Our gratitude is pure recognition, needing no awareness campaigns to justify it.
Now that we're all aware of the crucial role played by doctors—and by teachers, delivery workers bringing groceries and food to our homes—let's inscribe it in our minds and never forget it. Especially soon. When we pay the taxes that fund those salaries and those tools that save human lives.