Social Death By Covid
CW: significant isolation, abandonment & health issues; ableism; eugenics; abuse; suicidal ideation; death
https://healthselfdefense.substack.com/p/social-death-by-covid
Transcript of Jen’s post
I haven’t had a hug since getting diagnosed with MS & it’s been well over a year since the last time I hung out with a friend in person. I have a much easier time talking about physically dying than talking about the social death I’ve undergone the past few years which is actually why I think it’s so important to talk about.
“Social death” is a concept that’s used to describe the severe isolation of individuals & groups where they’re seen as “not fully human”, “not fully alive”, or “as good as dead” by society at large. Loss of meaningful social roles, loss of social connectedness, and physical/bodily losses tend to be seen as the main components of social death in sociology.
With how common it is for people to say things like “just stay home if you’re that high risk, you can’t expect society to change for you”, it’s no surprise that people who become debilitated by COVID, as well as disabled & particularly high risk people who continue to protect themselves from COVID, are at a high risk for experiencing social death.
Coupled with growing support for medically assisted dying laws & widening eligibility criteria, society’s ideas about whose lives “aren’t worth living” continues to expand in this era of rising eugenics & fascism.
In my own life, it’s easy to see how losses have compounded quickly. My MS symptoms have made me unable to work & significantly limit my capacity for socializing, and as I’ve lost connections & support while continuing to get sicker, my capacity to try to replace them has gotten even smaller, which is further complicated by the fact that the vast majority of community spaces are inaccessible for a multitude of reasons.
It’s a vicious cycle that’s extremely difficult to see a way out of, so I usually try to not think about it too much big emotional upsets & dysregulation massively flare my symptoms and take a frustratingly long time to recover from, and I’ve never felt as much despair & hopelessness as I do about how isolated I’ve become these days.
Every so often I’ll have a breakdown & think “I cannot do this for another month, 3 months, 6 months. Humans are not built to be so isolated, I cannot keep doing this.” But then I do, and the days turn into weeks & weeks turn into months & I keep going.
I’m one of the very privileged & lucky ones particularly since I have stable housing, the ability to participate in stuff online sometimes, and a very minor social media platform so it feels selfish to not keep fighting for us as much as I can. My survivor’s guilt runs deep & is continually reinforced by the ongoing losses in our online spaces.
I have a hard time talking about how isolated I am for a few reasons. For one, the last thing I want is pity or for strangers to offer to give me a hug. I’m autistic & hugging strangers has always been a level of purgatory for me, so I’m not particularly interested in visiting it at this time.
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, I also worry about my vulnerability being taken advantage of. Alongside the losses & growing isolation the past few years, I’ve been on the receiving end of offers of support that were either inauthentic or had ulterior motives and created even more upheaval & challenges in my life, so it’s hard to not be fearful of that happening again.
Then there’s the feelings of shame, embarrassment, and fear of being judged that are tough to overcome. I’ve been trying to write a post about this for over a year now, and when I first started, I felt so compelled to prove & justify that I used to have deep & longstanding friendships, that I used to be very involved in communities, and that I’m not some awful person who deserves to be isolated & abandoned.
There are relationships I’ve chosen to walk away from because of ableism & abuse, so it’s challenging to not internalize the idea that I ought to just “tough it out” & “get over it” so that I’m not alone, or that I put myself in this position by refusing to accept “care” & “connection” laced with mistreatment.
I think a lot about how in the early days of AIDS activism, activism by and for people with AIDS which was distinct from activism on behalf of the gay community as a whole started as a way of resisting social death. I know that I’m far from the only one experiencing social death from COVID, so I often wonder about how the future of COVID activism could expand to resist our isolation & social deaths while also addressing the material realities of those who are very sick & isolated in non-exploitative ways.
Although I don’t have the answers since there will obviously be many & they need to be created collectively I feel like it’s an important question to sit with.
Shame thrives & grows when it’s hidden away in the shadows, so if nothing else, I hope that opening up about this a bit more can serve as a reminder for anyone else experiencing social death that we don’t actually deserve this.
It’s so fucking hard, and I promise that you aren’t alone in seriously struggling through it. Although I can’t honestly say “it’ll get better”, I have to believe that it’s possible somehow.
#MaskUp #WearAMask #CovidRealist #CovidIsAirbone #LongCovid #YallMasking #DisabledLiberation #DisabilityJustice
