What do you think of when you hear that someone is disabled? Chances are, it’s one of two harmful narratives.

Narrative A is a person who is bedbound, wheelchair-bound, or completely unable to care for themselves.

Narrative B is a person who has a disability but still manages to live a full and adventurous life that many are envious of.

Why are these so harmful? Most people with disabilities actually fall somewhere between these two in a category known as dynamic disabilties.

Dynamic disabilities are ones in which your level of functioning fluctuates from day to day. It may include flare-ups of symptoms where you have to remain temporarily bedbound or use mobility aids like a wheelchair, but the rest of the time, you’re able to live a normal life relative to the severity of your disability.

People disabled by mental illness, for example, have dynamic disabilities. Using myself as an example here, I have schizoaffective disorder – bipolar type. This means I have symptoms of both schizophrenia and bipolar. These symptoms are generally well-controlled by medication, but sometimes, they become more severe and I need more help from my support system to function. I may need to do an outpatient or inpatient program to keep myself safe, as I’ve done in the past. I may need to miss work due to severe depressive or manic episodes, or symptoms like hallucinations. I may be unable to remember certain tasks like taking my medication on my own. I may have difficulty distinguishing reality from what’s going on inside my head at times.

People with physical disabilities may or may not have a dynamic disability, but mine are dynamic.

I have fibromyalgia, so while I never feel great, I often feel well enough to care for myself and my surroundings. I also have a connective tissue disease (hEDS) that causes pain, subluxations, and a whole mess of other stuff. Sometimes, the symptoms associated with both are worse than others, and in order to walk, I may need a cane. I may be unable to go long distances, and need to use a wheelchair provided by my massive healthcare facility to get to my appointments. I’m more prone to tendonitis and sprains and often have to wear braces to move normally. I get vestibular migraines and may need to spend a day or two in bed because of vertigo, extreme pain, fatigue, photophobia, phonophobia, nausea, vomiting, and other symptoms. I have arthritis that can predict a rainstorm with intense pain and swelling in my joints but otherwise causes me limited issues (except in my back, which has other problems).

Dynamic disabilities are consistently inconsistent.

When you see someone who seems debilitated by their disability one day and seems okay the next time you see them, it’s not because we are faking our disability. In fact, when you see us looking okay, it’s often because we are faking feeling better than we actually do, not the other way around. The days we seem worst are days we simply cannot fake being well.

When you do see someone like me fighting against the odds to create a life they still enjoy, I hope that you will remember the effort that it takes to do so despite all the setbacks that we face, the amount of our limited energy that it takes to do something good in this world for ourselves, those around us, or for a greater good – and that we have to do all that while being constantly doubted, disbelieved, gaslit, and dismissed by most of the people in our lives if we do not fit one of the narratives at the beginning of this post.

I think most people fail to understand that which they have not experienced, but sometimes, it’s okay to just take the word of those who actually live the experience every single day.

Dynamic disabilities are real. Fuck the narratives and stereotypes of what disability “should” look like.