The Cost of Disability

Article by Ruth Watterson

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I don’t know how old I was when I first heard the boot analogy. You know the one—the story about how the rich man buys a pair of boots that lasts five years, while the poor man buys five cheap pairs and still ends up with wet feet. I tend to convert it to shampoo. I long for the day I can get a Costco membership and buy those massive bottles of shampoo that will surely last for months. Instead, I feel like I buy shampoo every 10 seconds. Insert your own necessity. There is a cost to being poor, that’s for sure.

But that’s not the cost I’m writing about here. I want to talk about the cost for disabled people that I can only vaguely characterize as psychological or, to be more specific, a “loss of identity.” You see, the greatest loss for me wasn’t the quality boots or even the gargantuan shampoo bottles I coveted—it was the loss of my sense of self and my sense of belonging.

Here is my story.

I came to the U.S. in 2005 from my native United Kingdom, full of the hopes and dreams that accompany every immigrant. I had been offered a coveted spot in one of Harvard’s graduate programs, and the world seemed wide open for me. Or so I thought.

It was at Harvard that I had my first episode of mental ill health (or at least the first to be diagnosed). Lying on my sofa, broken thoughts swirling around my head, I couldn’t form a sentence. My thoughts congealed, and I couldn’t process them. I managed to call a friend and somehow made her understand that I was in the kind of pain that paralyzed both my body and mind. I was diagnosed with a panic disorder and, later, major depression. I gratefully swallowed any pill the doctor prescribed. The medication enabled me to hobble through grad school, but the depression and anxiety never really left.

Even getting married and having a perfect baby didn’t give me any reprieve. I loved my spouse and child deeply, but…