I haven’t been able to move faster than a brisk walk since I was 20 due to lung damage. A surgery to address the lung damage left nerve damage that prevents sweating on half of my body, but at least it stabilized my lung. Anxiety, depression, and complex trauma have been engaged in a shin-kicking contest against me since I was a child. More recently, I was assessed for autism, which explains why I need so many sensory-motor accommodations just to remain stable. Sadly, these same sensory-motor needs make conventional 9-5 work incompatible with my long-term survival. There’s also an eating disorder, but it’s really just pissing into the hurricane made of my other merry malfunctions.

So anyway, that’s the medical summary of my best decade yet. Despite my extensive list of afflictions both visible and otherwise, it took me years to call myself disabled. In hindsight, it reminds me of all the queer people questioning their queer credentials without realizing this is not something heterosexuals do.

One of the near-universal experiences disabled people share is wondering if we’re disabled enough. Usually, we’re questioning whether we can call ourselves disabled, but it filters into every adjacent stratum. Am I disabled enough to request accommodations at work? Am I disabled enough to claim state benefits? Am I disabled enough to join a support group? It’s incessant. Even after we come to terms with our impairments, we’re still dogged by self-doubt.

Rethinking disability in a baneful world

It took a postgraduate class on disabilities and mental health in university to see how disabilities actually manifest. I’d like to drop some of that knowledge on you.

For one, I subscribe to the social model of disability: People experience diverse impairments to functions like speech, memory, mobility, muscle development, anything. However, impairments become disabilities when they meet a world that fails to accommodate them. Under this approach, disability is characterized by the world’s treatment of impaired people. Thoughtless barriers built against us. An unwillingness to accommodate our needs. Marginalization. Impairments are a fact of life, but we become disabled because the people and institutions around us do not support our impaired selves — or even act against us.

The social model’s ethos is present in our willingness to call disabled people that: disabled people. We generally don’t do ‘people living with disabilities’ or ‘person with a disability’ because we are disabled. We’re disabled by discriminatory societies and inadequate healthcare systems. We call ourselves disabled to shift the burden of shame and responsibility to the world that has failed to uphold the bare minimum charge of helping us make our lives livable.

As for our impairments: They’re not pleasant, and we don’t ignore them. We can’t ignore them. But fixating on individual impairments doesn’t address the societal harms inflicted on us.

In short, this is an approach to disability rooted in activism. It characterizes disabled people as people who have been wronged, rather than as passive recipients of care and sympathy. It rings true to those of us who still have the energy to still get mad and get even. It doesn’t always make me new friends when I bring it up.

The breadth of disability

Most of us have familiarity with visible and invisible disabilities. Some are very visible, and some are well-hidden even to the people living with them. This is complicated by the fact that we like to work in neat categories — even subconsciously — but existence doesn’t. Impairments can change from moment to moment. I’m quick to get out of breath, but I still look able-bodied in public. I only start wheezing and limping when my damaged lung collapses. The transient quality of many impairments make them extremely difficult to explain to an uncaring world. We begin jobs and social engagements with our best foot forward, and people are surprised when we have a flare-up.

There’s also the rising recognition of debilitating mental health conditions as disabling. That can be very freeing for sufferers and give us better resources to advocate for our needs but makes understanding disability even more complicated. Depression, anxiety, and myriad other ailments are always worse with friends. A few ‘minor’ or tolerable impairments can bunch up and make your day unbearable. My girlfriend’s endometriosis is fairly mild for her. It’s a day-to-day annoyance in her life but if there’s a bout of anxiety or dperession, she’s out of action for a day.

Friends, relatives, and employers frequently misunderstand qualifiers like ‘minor’, ‘manageable’, or ‘tolerable’. Those qualifiers are often characterized as the fixed, upper bound of our impairments. They’re often the daily default we’ve adapted to. And they will worsen without warning. When I say I have ‘minor respiratory irritation’ on a daily basis, it doesn’t mean things are okay and I’ll start worrying when I hit 45. It means that my life is always tense, and random unpleasantries like flu, COVID, hay fever, or exercise can make me ill at short notice.

The thing that tipped me over to recognizing myself as disabled was coming across a simple statement: Able-bodiedness is a temporary state for everyone who lives a long and full life. Everyone who lives long enough will see their bodies and minds slow. Some people just lose their able-bodiedness earlier than others. Vehicle collisions, illness, personal choices, and even our birth can revoke that cherished able-bodied status. I lost mine at 20.

Being with disability

The creaks, aches, and scars will catch up to everyone. I mean, look at the US Congress. It’s bordering on an assisted living facility. Hell, one of them skipped the metaphor and went straight into assisted living.

Extracting myself from self-doubt was deeply uncomfortable. That’s why it took so long and so many conditions for me to finally do it. Most disabilities are transient, invisible, or the result of individually small impairments snowballing to debilitation. Most of us who are disabled will never have a clear ‘tell’ like amputation or loss of sensory-motor function that defines disability in wider discourse. But godammit, we deserve care too.

Learning our impairments and how we’ve been disabled doesn’t have to be restricting either. It’s a step that fosters agency. There’s value in taking command of our story, even if the plot beats aren’t exactly what we wanted.

There are concrete benefits, too. We can begin advocating for our support needs once we confirm their existence. My list of sensory-motor needs is extensive, but knowing them means I can push for a home and workplaces that fit me. Also, I’m now part of the support communities I need without feeling like an imposter. My access to topical discussions about happier living with any condition I have? Better than ever. My access to spicy disability memes? Astounding.

The 21st Century sets an impossible pace for human existence and does its best to shame people who can’t match it. Able bodies are pushed to the brink, and disabled ones are being relegated to a smear on the tarmac of ruthless capitalism. To say our minds and bodies can’t keep up isn’t a stain on our capabilities. It’s an acknowledgement of our limits and the fact that some people will reach those limits sooner. Even more importantly for the future, coming to terms with our impairments and disablement is an act of protest against forces that would keep us away from community, knowledge, and well-earned care.

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