Is my stutter a disability?
Is this part of my identity that I am unwilling to admit?
I’m sitting here watching HBO’s latest show, The Penguin, and I'm already emotionally unwell at how well the show depicts stuttering (that is for another blog). As I continue to watch the BTS at the end, the showrunner speaks on how the two characters' connection is their disability.
That’s when I paused.
Upon the early days of my stuttering acceptance journey, I did look up whether stuttering counts as a disability. I swear that it stated there was no concrete yes or no answer. Instead what I found was more subjective. It stated that if you believe that your stutter causes a real hindrance in your life to exist every day as a human being then yes, it is a disability. So, I dismissed it and never looked back.
So when the showrunner claiming that it is a disability so matter of fact, it gave me pause, dare I say with an undertone of denial. In no way did i, me, asia, have a disability. That was until I googled it again.
There it was, plain as day:
“As the American Institute for Stuttering explains, “If you are a stutterer, who is substantially limited in the major life activity of speaking, you may be considered disabled under the ADA.”
My head started spinning.
Reading more into this, I wasn’t completely wrong, your stutter does have to impact your life severely.
I thought to myself, however,
Does my stutter? What does severe mean? What is the rate per stutter ratio that qualifies all of these parameters? Have I lost jobs over this? I know I lost friends over it as a kid? Does my place of employment want to withhold my opportunities due to it?
Disability is such a heavy word. It's not the word’s fault. We’ve put so much negativity and stigma behind the word and those who identify with it that one can’t help but internalize its weight. One can’t help but also be the problem for the prevailing stigma when faced with it as a question to answer.
And I was.
You see, I have been so covert for so long and internalized normalcy and fluency that “disability” was never a consideration. I’d like to believe as a result, people in my life might have come and gone without fully knowing this side of my identity. I have had fluent interviews, spoken in front of hundreds for my job, led meetings, and was the face of what the ideal should be.
All under their noises.
It doesn’t matter however if I fooled them, it was the fact that I was fooling myself. I was never brave enough, to be honest with myself.
So now I am here.
For better or for worse I do not claim I have a disability but nor do I feel ready to face that question. Although I may stutter more freely, I still harbor the internalized fluency deep in my psyche. It still flows in my veins.
I do know that if I ever had some in depth examination to determine this, I would have to be okay with whatever outcome, and not let it stray me off my path.
