"Sick Gal Seeks Rare Elk Sighting or Mate" Essay in Hobart

Chronic illness already made dating hard. And then the pandemic arrived.

“I almost forgot—” my childhood friend interjected as we were wrapping up a phone call on a blustery September day. “I talked to Lindsey and she agrees that you don’t need to put a disclosure on your dating profile. You can just cross that bridge if you meet someone you like.”

Her comment startled me from my meditative walk-and-talk on the golf course in my backyard; I had already put aside the profile dilemma and was trying not to think about it too often, this question of how someone like me might date. And even more complicated: how someone like me might date years into a pandemic that—as far as most people are concerned—is long over.
— Laura Brady