I’m doing an application for an internship. It asks me–strictly for diversity data collection, it clarifies (I am suspicious)–if I have a disability. It then lists disabilities, most of them things I understand to be disabilities in the conventional sense, things I would list when asked for some examples of disability. I’m skimming the list for no real reason because I know I don’t have a disability. I get to the bottom: Anxiety, Depression. I pause. I have those things–in a clinical, diagnostic capacity, I have those things. I’ve never been confronted with the direct possibility that on me they are disabilities.

I remember in high school having a 504 plan recommended by my therapist that I would have to review with each teacher I had providing me with academic accommodations because my anxiety heavily impacted my performance in school. I google “504 plan” and The DO-IT (Disabilities, Opportunities, Internetworking, and Technology) Center at the University of Washington, Seattle tells me that a 504 plan “is a plan developed to ensure that a child who has a disability identified under the law […] that will ensure their academic success and access to the learning environment.” Oh. I guess I never considered it a plan for disability when I had it. It seemed more like a plan to make up for the fact that I couldn’t function like my peers, which I guess could define a disability. I never thought to legitimize that by naming it as one–others in my 504 testing groups had real disabilities, it seemed to me, and I could recognize that but didn’t find it appropriate to use a word so weighty for my experiences when I didn’t think mine were that bad.

The social model decides that “disability is something imposed on top of our impairments,” and it’s this that gives me pause filling out the form–is there another thing on top of my impairments? I think about what the thing would look like; the model tells me it’s a disadvantage brought on by social and cultural expectations of a body, of functionality. I have an impairment, and there are impeding expectations of productivity I am sometimes unable to meet because of these impairments, and it seems I can syllogistically conclude that this is a disability. But it feels like I’m missing some step in the middle. Drawing this conclusion beckons me to be aware of its gaps, and the ways my particular experience mitigates the effects of impairment; my socioeconomic standing provides me with health insurance that covers the cost of therapy and medication, and the support from my family allows me to find ways to cope with my impairment and be successful in spite of it. It still feels weird for me to claim a label so historically contingent and significant for those whose goals in their everyday lives are significantly impeded by a world that won’t accommodate them. Then again, my qualification for a 504 plan classified me as an individual with a disability. I have a tendency to distrust bureaucratic categorizations of identity, though, and recognize they’re more so for convenience and classification than anything. Plus I don’t have a 504 plan anymore in college, largely because I was too lazy to set one up, and I’m excelling in school regardless. I don’t know. I pause and click “No, I do not have a disability.”