Here are the reasons why I came out as disabled, and why I keep on coming out and talking about this.

Lying is Exhausting

I wanted this to be some noble truth, and I kept circling around for a more profound way to say it, but in the end, one truth is simply that lying is exhausting.

I was so tired of hiding my hearing aids. I was tired of hair spraying all of my hair around them just. so. and freaking out about whether or not people could see them. I was tired of pretending I was fascinated with what people were saying, as opposed to merely trying to figure out what they were saying by dint of lip reading.

I was tired of slipping into the bathroom to change my hearing aid batteries, tired of bending myself over backwards to try and figure out conversations in loud restaurants, tired of going to movies where I couldn’t understand much. Tired of doing quick turns when I’d slip and misunderstand what someone said, tired of looking stupid because I responded inappropriately.

And that’s just the deaf stuff.

For my TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury), I was tired of trying to stay in fluorescence lighting that would trigger my brain, tired of fighting through the memory lapses and fatigue. I was tired of making it all seem like it was no big deal when it was really a Huge Freaking Deal and it took tremendous amounts of energy to keep everything together without explaining any of it or just being open about all the accommodations and tools I was using – or needed – for myself.

My C-PTSD (Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) was perhaps the most complicated, and it was not clear until just last year that I actually have C-PTSD and not bi-polar disorder. While my quest to stay even-keeled and balanced is daily and consuming, I still rarely talk much about this. Up until recently, living with C-PTSD has been an “in the trenches” experience and I need to be at least crawling out of the trenches before I can talk about it.

Back to lying being exhausting.

It is: it’s tiring and I find it a lot less stressful to just be honest and open about things.