Illnesses and diseases don't have to be visible to be "real". The same thing goes for disabilities, something that I strangely never really considered until fairly recently. Why is this strange? I was diagnosed with GAD (Generalized Anxiety Disorder) in my childhood, which means that I have a chronic mental disability.
What does disability look like for me? Over the years, my anxiety has manifested as phobias, OCD, panic attacks, agoraphobia, and more. While I'm currently "enjoying" a spell of relatively lesser amounts of anxiety, many of these symptoms are still a part of my everyday life. Looking back, there have been periods throughout my life in which my anxiety has been truly debilitating. There were many things that I wouldn't have been able to accomplish without understanding from others and/or accommodations to level the playing field.
I have also suspected for some time that I fall somewhere on the autism spectrum, something initially suggested to my parents when I was a child (and what I honestly wonder is the cause of a lot of my anxiety). Unfortunately, my experience in seeking clarity in the form of a diagnosis was curtailed a few years ago by an intern who suggested that I didn't have autism because I was "coping too well" and that I wasn't struggling like his non-verbal autistic brother (a comparison that I think was vastly inappropriate). He then went on to say that I could likely "pay $1000 for a diagnosis" if I really "wanted" the label. Unfortunately, experiences like this aren't uncommon, but I sincerely hope that situations will continue to improve as the variances of the autistic experience are better understood. In addition to my anxiety and my "touch of the 'tism", my partner (a textbook case of ADHD) suspects that I have some form of ADHD. This is something I've not considered in the past as I've never thought myself to have trouble focusing (outside of being very easily momentarily distracted), lack of focus being the main trait that overshadows other ADHD symptoms in the common understanding of the disorder. If I do have ADHD, it would be a mirror case as I do not feel like it negatively impacts my daily life. Regardless of the nitty gritty, I am clearly a very "neurospicy" person (more on neurodivergence later).
As with many things that affect our worldview, I think media and art have played a large role in why I have only recently realized that I am considered "disabled" by my personal cocktail of mental health issues, both diagnosed and undiagnosed. Many disabled characters are portrayed in a way that they are their disabilities. Their plotlines revolve around their challenges so completely that we don't see the rest of who they are. While disabilities do have a profound impact on many people's lives, that's not all there is to them. It is still relatively rare (although thankfully becoming less so) to see characters who deal with disabilities achieving things that don't revolve around their disability.
Without giving too much away, I will disclose that the protagonist of the first installment
of my trilogy is neurodivergent. While it sounds like a mysterious faction from the Divergent series, neurodivergence is actually an umbrella term referring to a brain that works differently than others. This has been used to describe people with certain mental disabilities and conditions. While I don't explicitly detail what Alison has been diagnosed with in my story, it is clear in her life experiences and behaviour that she processes the world in a way that is not considered "normal". As eventual readers of my book will see, Alison is impacted by her disability, but not defined by it. It is part of her, not all of her. Writing Alison has been a "write what you know" experience for me, my personal experiences helping to make Alison a more tangible character as she deals with her mental health challenges and makes her way through life.
As I continue to work on my series, I will include more characters with disabilities, both physical and mental. As with people in the LGBTQIA community, disabled people deserve to be shown thriving in their own ways, even if it is in an unrealistic work of science fiction.
What disabilities do you think are underrepresented the most in media? What disabilities do you think are the most misunderstood?
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