Back to The Defiant Few ←We Share a Diagnosis. We May Not Be Friends.
A shared illness can spare us an explanation without making us compatible, and a community becomes smaller when belonging requires pretending otherwise.
Same disease. Instant friendship. If only compatibility were that easy, we could replace dating apps, small talk and several disappointing dinners with a medical record and a seating chart. I live with Parkinson’s, but I remain unconvinced that it has qualified me to enjoy everybody else who does. Apparently, there is still a whole person attached to each diagnosis. Inconvenient development.
That sounds harsher than it needs to, partly because the alternative sounds so kind. We understand one another. We are in this together. We should support our own. I value the wish underneath those sentences. There is relief in not having to translate every part of an experience before somebody is willing to believe it. But I want to be careful about what I ask that relief to prove.