DISABILITY AWARENESS| EQUALITY

How I Learned to Stop Hiding My Chronic Illness and Take Care of It Instead

An invisible disability needed accommodation, but I didn’t ask — here’s what I should have done

11 min read

Just now

Bea’s California-casual wedding was a sensory overload. Tall fences made her friend Janice’s backyard a big, messy bowl of noise salad as family and friends milled around, chattering at the tops of their lungs. They exclaimed over the caterers’ cute touches: finger-plump baby succulents in pastel ceramic pots, a tandem bicycle decorated in flowers, a sign that ordered us to “Eat, Drink, and Be Married,” as if anyone had a doubt about the occasion. It was a celebration of true love, silly puns, and a bright future.

It was also a disaster for one guest. Me. The bride’s best friend.

I was hiding a secret: this wedding was about to trigger an unstoppable neuro-physical meltdown.

I had to get out.

For 10 years, Bea and I had been single, living on opposite sides of the country but in contact almost every day. We talked for hours about what felt like everything — deaths, breakups, weird boyfriends, career frustrations, feelings hurt by nearly everyone else we knew, illnesses from pneumonia…