I know disability encompasses learning disabilities, mobility issues, mental illnesses, diseases like fibromaglia.  And it is deeply important to create a world where people with all types of different abilities are unquestionably treated as people.  I'm so angry that this is even a question.  I admit, though, that I have totally fucked up as an ally.  Because when the following situation went down, I had no idea how to deal with it, I was sure I was alone, I didn't know anything about bodies and society and social justice, and that means I wasn't paying enough attention to other people's experiences. 

I'm dealing right now with a sleep disorder.  Essentially, there is something wrong with my circadean rhythm that only lets me sleep naturally when the sun is at its zenith and the rest of the world is abuzz with productivity.  I've had it my whole life, only I haven't known how to talk about it.  I still don't know how to talk about it.  As a kid my family blamed me, as a teen I blamed myself, in college I scheduled my life around it, but now that I'm a law student, I'm out of options, I  have to deal with it.  In the last few months, I've seen three therapists, one of whom made me cry for a week.  I'm seeing a psychiatrist, and am in phone contact with two sleep specialists. I have a GP here at school.  I've spent the night in the hospital, nodules glued to my head, a sleep technician who wore her competence and kindness like a suit of armor and tried not to humiliate me when the wires pulled loose nearly every hour, and she had to come in and watch me sleepily try to fix the earring that the glue kept pulling out of my cartilage. 

I deal with life by running on adrenaline for massive amounts of time, and then crashing, utterly, emotionally, physically, interpersonally.  I withdrew from everyone - not easy, when you live on campus and have all of your classes with all of your friends, but I did.  I didn't miss a single class until February this year and then I crashed,  sleeping through class after class after class.  I had to give an oral presentation in February, and I stood up and couldn't remember a word of what I'd looked at for days beforehand.  I'd open up a case to research and not be able to understand the words on the screen.  And my crutch, the Ambien, stopped working, so I started to slide back to my natural sleep schedule, but this time with a powerful sedative in my system. 

I tried a different drug for a week.  It made me incoherent, dizzy, useless, and awake for the full eight hours it was supposed to make me sleep, and then dropped me into unconsciousness at the time I'd need to go to class.  I was terrified I'd have to drop out of school.  I made an appointment with the Dean of Students.  He was kind - and why, why do I call this kindness?  It's not kindness, it's his job, I am stunned that someone is doing their job when that job is to fucking work for me when I need help - and said casually and effusively "Let me get M., our Disabilities Coordinator."

There was that word.  Disability. 

It shouldn't have shaken me at all, because I know that disability is morally neutral - it's an adjective.  Like blue, or wet, or female.  But I still had to compose myself before the two of them walked back in. 

Disability.  Was I disabled?  I had to make up my mind.  But I couldn't think.  And the energy of speaking coherently, of presenting a calm and professional face in that gorgeous corner office, was all I had in me that day. 

I meet with M. a lot.  She's young and efficient and friendly and compassionate.  And she uses that word a lot.  Disability. 

What I didn't know until very recently was that long-term (over 30 days) use of Ambien, which I'd been prescribed early in the fall, may cause anxiety, depression, lack of concentration, inability to articulate thoughts - everything that I had thought was wrong with me.  I wasted three months of my life in a terrible fog, running back to my messy apartment to cry; eyes glazing over every time I opened a casebook not because I didn't want to see the words on the page (I did) or because I don't love the questions of law and policy and morality that the book asked me to explore (I do, oh, I do). 

In attempting to stave off the worst effects of my hormonal problem, I'd given myself symptoms of mental illness.  And nobody - not any of the therapists, not the GP, not the psychiatrist or the technician or the specialist - warned me that could happen, or even listened to my listless, sometimes shaky voice as I tried to explain how I felt.  I found out this information by the reading I'd done on my own.  I'm taking a medication for the side effects of my medication now.  I still can't regulate my sleep schedule, but I can think again. 

How did I feel when I couldn't think?  I can't even remember.  It's like those last couple of paragraphs you tried to read, in those first few minutes after sunset before you turned off the light.  The headache creeps back when you look back down at the page.*

The fact that I am able to even make this attempt to deal with this is a function of enormous privilege.  I am white, and from an extended family which is newly middle class.  I am intelligent, at least according to the standardized tests that we prize so highly in our society.  I'm a natural-born American citizen.  If I lacked any one of these identities, it's quite likely that I wouldn't even have the options I do now, but would have done what so many non-privileged insomniacs are forced to do - take a night job, one that is lonely and dead-end and offers little room for advancement, and given up on the compounded rigors of formal education. 

And sleep issues aren't part of the ADA.  So according to the law, I am not disabled.  And I can "pass," if that's what I'm doing, to strangers who don't know me, or see me in the mornings - they don't know my head was spinning all day, that I was late to class again, that I can't remember anything that happened this morning.  And I feel that claiming the label of disability might be appropriating the experience of people with legally recognized disabilities, and people who don't have the privileges I do.  I don't want to do that.  If I get lucky, if one of my team of experts hits on that magical formula of light and hormones and chemicals and I can regulate my life normally, will I still have a circadean rhythm disorder?  Does the potential for non-permanence take me out of the real of disability?  Or am I just being a coward, and refusing a label I should take?  I don't know.

What is your disability identity? If you are disabled, do you feel disability is a part of you and your experience?

I don't know.  I know that this particular function, or non-function, of my body has shaped my life in ways I can't quite get my head around.  I've never not been afraid to make an appointment, to say that I can work.  I will never have a normally functioning metabolism, and frustration with that part of me, combined with the misogynist expectations of the world we live in gave me an eating disorder that shaped years of my life.  I know that the fear of laziness has hammered my behavior and self-image into something it wouldn't be, only I don't know what else it would be.  I'm trying to contextualize this experience into the larger world of ability and identity questions.  I'm trying to keep things in perspective without minimizing my own experience, or failing to do the things that might help me cope.

What is your disability identity?

I don't know.

*Re-reading, I'm realizing this statement is ableist, as not everyone can see or read.  I'm leaving it up, partially to acknowledge my mistake, and partially because I just can't think of a better comparison.