My Disability Is Sometimes Visible
But I have to make a choice between scrutiny and erasure.
CN: general discussion of chronic pain, casual ableism, and specific details of health problems
If you met me in person without any prior introduction and I told you I was disabled, you would be confused. Even if you were somewhat familiar with the range of disabilities that exist, which many abled people are not (there is more to disability than wheelchairs and white canes) it would be pretty difficult for you to pick up just by looking at me that my body operates in a fundamentally different way from abled bodies.
My body looks like a healthy body. I have all my limbs, I don’t use mobility devices of any kind, no casts, no special glasses, no hearing aids, no unusual body configurations or proportions. I walk and move in an average way.
You won’t be able to identify my disability by sight because all of the ways my body is different are completely internal. I typically have pain of varying levels of severity in 10–15 different parts of my body at all times but since pain isn’t visible on its own and it’s such a constant for me, you won’t see it on my face most of the time. When I walk, I’m concentrating on my breathing, on the positioning of my body, and on which muscles are engaging and which ones are relaxing…
