I Didn't Become Disabled at 22

When people ask when I became disabled, I usually say I was 22 years old. That’s when I had brain surgery and the stroke that happened afterward, the effects of which I’m still living with today.

But lately I’ve realized that answer isn’t entirely true.

Looking back, I think I’ve been living with disability for much longer. Learning more about what depression can look like in children makes me suspect it may have started even earlier. But I know for certain that by the time I was 14—when I was diagnosed with depression and started medication—it was already shaping my life.

I’ve had periods since then where I declared myself “better” and stopped taking my medication. But it usually wasn’t long before the depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder caught up with me again.

So No One Knew. Or Did They?

In my teens and early twenties, I became very good at masking what was going on.

At least I thought I was.

No one ever said much—except for one psychiatrist who took one look at me as I walked into his office and said, “So... you’ve stopped taking your medication, have you?”

Years later, after I’d finally committed to staying on my medication consistently, I was talking with a friend about how—even medicated—I could almost predict a mood crash every autumn when the days started getting shorter after Daylight Saving Time.

She looked at me and said, “Yeah, you’re a different person in the winter.”

I hadn’t realized.

That conversation made me wonder how well I’d really been hiding things all those years. I remembered times when the intrusive thoughts were so relentless that the only escape I could find was sleeping or burying myself in schoolwork. I’d assumed no one noticed.

Now I’m not so sure.

I wonder whether my university friends suspected something was wrong during my low periods and didn’t know what to say.

My family certainly saw it during the months between learning I’d need AVM surgery and actually having it. I was accustomed to living with my anxiety, but I think seeing it so plainly took them by surprise. I’d been hiding it from them for a long time.

What I Know Now

It took me years to recognize that chronic depression, anxiety, and the intrusive thoughts caused by obsessive-compulsive disorder are real disabilities.

Because they were invisible, I somehow believed they didn’t “count” the same way my physical disability did.

I don’t believe that anymore.

Now that I’ve found medication that works for me long-term, I take it just as faithfully as I take my seizure medication. And I don’t let people shame me for needing either one.

Some of us were born with brains that don’t always work in our best interest.

When I was in university—and later in community college after my stroke—I reached out to the counseling services available to me whenever my depression became too much to manage alone.

I still do.

I know many people don’t, and there are countless reasons why. The stigma surrounding mental health disabilities and receiving treatment for them is still very real. I remember trying desperately to hide my struggles during my final year of high school because I was so ashamed.

If I could talk to that frightened teen today, I’d tell her:

• Winters are going to be hard, but they won’t last forever. Hold on until spring. The extra daylight really does make a difference.

• When you get to university, you’ll have access to counseling and psychiatric care through your student health plan. You can start feeling better.

• You don’t have to be ashamed of any of this. You’re not a bad person. You haven’t disappointed anyone. You’re deeply loved, exactly as you are.

I don’t know if she’d believe me.

Living with a visible disability taught me to recognize disability in myself. Living with an invisible one taught me that not every disability announces itself.

And it’s reminded me to extend more grace to other people, too.

Depression, anxiety, OCD, and many other disabilities are invisible. We rarely know what someone else is carrying, or how much effort it’s taking to get through the day. When someone seems impatient, withdrawn, distracted, or unlike themselves, we often have no idea what battles they’re fighting.

Sometimes those battles are happening entirely inside their own mind.

That’s reason enough to choose kindness whenever we can.