1/ You all have mostly not been in quarantine before. I have. I do not say this for any reason other than to just say it. That quarantine creates shapes within you that you may not have known existed.

2/ I was in quarantine for Tuberculosis. And that, itself was a journey. The long road to diagnosis. The knowledge that there were shadows on my lungs in X-rays. Scars. Cavities, even. I researched and I researched. . . . .

3/ When I came out into the world, from quarantine, it was all just the same, but I was in imbalance. My limbs moved differently. I was afraid of even my own breathing. And I was afraid of the faces of others.

4/ Another thing, though, was that, before the quarantine, before I choked on blood, before they’d ever told me my cough was because my lung was collapsed, I already had problems. Depression. Anxiety. I had done poorly at school.

5/ But then, suddenly, with TB, it was all about the physical disease, as well as the intervention of the state. My failings were no longer just my failings. They were also a product of the disease. My depression was secondary to the disease that destroyed my lungs.

6/ When I emerged back into the world, after quarantine, and after the cure, I was terrified. I had spent months ravaged by a disease that destroyed my body. And now I had to enter the world again, but only as myself. I was scared, and I think I remain scared, of that person.

7/ There is something about physically identifiable illness that is so different from other kinds of illness or suffering. You can say, "What went wrong in my life was that this things was attacking my lungs" not "what went wrong was because I couldn't force myself to thrive"

8/ Of course it is all different now. When I had TB, I was a kind of Patient Zero. Hearing someone cough in public would induce a panic attack, but, really the trauma was that I had the disease and no one else did. And this made the world quite dizzying.

9/ It will be different now, for everyone. We will re-enter a world and we will all be cautious of one another. But some things may be the same.

10/ The absolute terror of being stripped bare by a disease, that may be the same. The difficulty of reconciling who we were before the disease and who we are after, that could be the same too.

11/ And, most, importantly, the difficulty of resting with all who we are—our wounds & how we have struggled to heal them—that may be the same as well. How do we justify our suffering to the world? How can we make others understand? And forgive? That will be the same.

12/ As much grief as TB caused in my life, it became a part of me. The struggle against it became a part of me. The struggle against it was a part of me too. &, even when I was cured, I felt I could not let go of the disease. I feel that will be the case for many with C19 as well

13/ I think people will feel uncomfortable w/in so many domains. There will be those who feel grief, but unjustified in their grief. There will be those who feel anxiety, but unjustified in their anxiety. There will be those who feel, rightly, that the whole world has changed. .