One of the main issues disabled people face is the judgment and labels of the able-bodied world. Many people seem to believe that just because one's disability isn't obvious and on display, then that must mean people are faking it or are being lazy.
But we've come to realize that many disabilities are unseen by the naked eye. And that can cause an even greater struggle.
Redditoru/fairlycertainoctopuswanted to hear from those fighting silent battles by asking:
Redditors with "invisible" disabilities what's one thing you wish other people knew?
I have several close friends who struggle with crippling pain and illness. They face lupus, fibro, and Covid. And one of the reasons that causes most tears flow on a daily basis, is the rudeness and cruelty of the outside world. They've been labeled everything from frauds to lazy idiots. It's tragic.
I Exist
Seth Meyers Thank You GIF by Late Night with Seth MeyersGiphy"That invisible doesn't mean it doesn't exist."
- Molgaard
"That you can pretend to have it doesn't mean I am pretending."
The Looks
"Just because I don't "look disabled" or "act disabled" doesn't mean I'm not disabled. The way I explain it to people is that just because you don't look hungry, that doesn't mean you aren't hungry. Hunger looks different for everyone the same way disabilities affect everyone differently."
I'm Not What You Think
"I lack executive functioning skills and that's not an excuse for why I can't remember or know how to do simple things yet appear to very intelligent and smart. When I make mistakes I'm not doing them on purpose and being corrected or taught how to do them will not make me do it right the next time."
"I'm not lazy, sometimes simple things just makes me want to rip out of my skin and scream at the moment so I'm not doing it now but will do it when I'm able to. My brain so to speak is a selfish brain and I can't always think past where I am even though I'm not a selfish person."
Sound Off
I once had a conversation with a receptionist at a clinic over the phone and they said "Um, that service is only for house bound people" I said I was housebound. She said "Um... can I ask why?" So I give her my diagnosis and she goes "Oh I'm so sorry, you don't sound disabled so, I didn't know."
"wish they had it too."
"That when people ask how I lost weight and I mention a somewhat rare and fairly painful GI disorder, it makes me see red if they "wish they had it too." Not being able to eat solid foods, hearing rumors I'm on heroin or cocaine, being so bony it hurts to sit on hard chairs and needing a pillow between my knees because they're so bony to sleep during flares, constant pain that doctors rarely take seriously unless it's hospital admission level bad... the quality of life sucks so the side of my waist stopped mattering years ago."
"Sadly I used to do hair and make up so I'm pretty good at covering up how bad I feel and even doctors would add "but you look great!" as some kind of consultation when my life was falling apart pre diagnosis/treatment. Yeah, almost lost my house and came close to bankruptcy, but my stomach (was) flat. I prefer secure housing and employment and if I want to be slim I want it the healthy way and not awful disease related malnutrition."
Why can't we just be kind? None of us know the struggle of another. We should lead with that perspective instead of judging. Just "shake it off" is not a remedy for anything by the way.
The Sister
"My older sister was born with her umbilical cord around her neck and it resulted in a brain injury due to lack of oxygen. Until she was 12 she couldn't grasp math as the portion of her brain that handled mathematics was cut off from the rest of her brain due to the damage. When she was 12 she took music lessons and for whatever reasons there may be, learning music taught her brain a new way to get to its math centers and she suddenly excelled at it."
Not a Lie
"I have Covid longhauler and I was at a healthy weight previously, now I'm underweight and struggling to keep from losing more due to lack of appetite and all the other GI issues that come with this. Every single one of my friends voiced jealousy over my (unhealthy) weight loss and said something like "oh I wish I got long Covid so I could drop these pounds." 😤Lucky for them I don't have the energy to get pissed and scream and yell nowadays but sometimes I wonder if I need to so they can grow as people."
Mobility Issues
"That yes, I can always be in pain and always am, even though I don't always show it. By the time it's obvious I'm in pain, it's really bad. That if I say I can't do something, I actually can't considering half the time I do stuff I shouldn't and pay for it. That I know my body best because I live in it."
"Trust me to know my own body. Just because you can't see it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Yes I do have mobility issues, no that doesn't mean I can't walk/stand at all, though it is always painful so i'm very limited in how long I can. I'm not faking it. Mobility isn't necessarily all or nothing."
Learning
"I'm a parent of a child with an "invisible" disability. I wish people would just grasp that autism isn't always like some character you saw on TV."
"My boyfriend is still fairly new to a lot of this, and I have Autism (was labelled Aspergers till they changed it), ADHD and anxiety issues. He's always surprised when the fact I'm on Disability pension comes up. And I just cannot manage to work out how to explain a lot of it."
- Vynlamor
Basic Truth
This Up Here GIF by Chord OverstreetGiphy"I am the same person I was before I told you about it."
- KitGundy
"Yes! People can swing between treating you like a leper or ignoring your disability entirely, neither of which are helpful. Respectful curiosity and compassion is what is needed."
The next time someone tells you their health is not well, just show a little empathy. They have no obligation to prove themselves to anyone. Invisible disability is a very real life issue.
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"People of Reddit, what is the dumbest reason your (ex) partner gave for cheating?"
So Much For "Till Death do Us Part".
"'You are dying! Do you really want me alone when you are dead?'"
"I was fighting cancer."
"He also told me that I was disgusting and he felt gross touching me."
"Luckily, both types of cancer are out of my life."- Mr_BigDuck
You Could Have At Least Left A Message!
"'You didn't answer your phone, was I supposed to spend Saturday night alone?'"
"I was at work, and so were you, we worked together you f*cking moron."- sixesand7s
Love At First Sight... Or Not
"She met someone that she immediately saw herself marrying."
"A month after we broke up she moved across the country, got married, called me to tell me she made a mistake, got divorced, moved back home, got pregnant and then got married again."- Zarrush
Gonna Have To Do Better Than That...
"Her response once I caught her was that she was flat-out horny."
"But after I said that’s why you have a boyfriend it was kinda funny how she went dead silent."- PuzzleheadedFarm7417
Um...
"He said that he cheated on me because I wanted to have too much sex."
"More than 5 years later I still can't find any logic in that."- Etrixie
So Much For Commitment
"'It's not like we're married'."
"Apparently I can't expect respect from someone who goes from calling me 'love of my life' to blowing her high school shag toy when he comes back to town."- FortGeek
Cartoons Button GIF by NickelodeonGiphyIt Never Is...
“'It’s not what you think it is!'”
"After I walked in on them making out."
"While she was on his lap."
"Both without shirts."- MrSirChris
Two Whole Weeks...
"I couldn't have sex for two weeks so I could recover from surgery so she thought it wasn't cheating'."- Henchforhire
What The Actual...
"My ex-girlfriend said I forgot you were alive."
"For details, I wasn't in the military, I was at university."- Ali8ly
scared star wars GIF by Hyper RPGGiphyThat Only Makes It Worse
"It was his kid's mom so it didn't count."- kittenxx96
"In Sickness And In Health"...Oops!
“'I have needs for sex you aren’t helping me with!'"
"Said to me the day I get home from spending a week in the hospital with kidney failure (lupus)."- EndlesslyUnfinished
We Can Only "Open" Our Hearts So Much...
"Well, I know this guy that was convinced he was in an open relationship, except he forgot to let his girlfriend know.."
"She found out 7 years into the 'open relationship'."
"With multiple women, in 4 continents."
"Oh he also had a book where he'd categorize them."- ProfessionalSpite866
Episode 2 Player GIF by ABC NetworkGiphySanta? SANTA?!?!
"My serial cheater ex-once told me while in a fit of tears."
"'I can't stop cheating, I just have so many issues, my mom lied about Santa when I was a kid and it really f*cked me up'."
"'I don't think I can trust people because of it so I cheat'."- pastelflorist
No One Likes To Be Treated Like A Piece Of Meat...
“It’s like if you order the same subway sandwich for a year, eventually you’re gonna get bored of it."
"But you try another flavor and when you go back to the original one it’s better than you remembered'.”
"Felt not so good being compared to a 6 inch BLT tbh."- NucularOrchid
Oh, nothing, except commitment and fidelity...
"'She was prettier than you, what did you expect?'"
"We were engaged and had been dating for 3 years."- kathjoy
No doubt all these poor people are grateful for dodging the bullet that staying with these people would have been.
Even if it can't quite make up for the pain and embarrassment these experiences brought them.
Redditor InsertBurnsHere wanted to discuss the world's most unresolved issues, so they asked:
"What is the biggest unsolved mystery in human history?"
The mysteries that haunt me are all murder stories.
When will we find the killers?!
The Absconded
Bank Robbery Heist GIF by ADWEEKGiphy"Who was behind the Gardner Museum heist? Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of art was taken, and we have little to no clue who was behind it, and none of the paintings have surfaced."
Stillwater215
The Linear Truth
"In 1893, British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans purchased some ancient stones with mysterious inscriptions on them at a flea market in Athens. On a later trip to the excavations at Knossos on the island of Crete, he recognized one of the symbols from his stones and began a study of the engraved tablets being uncovered at various sites on the island."
"He discovered two different systems, which he called Linear A and Linear B. While Linear B was deciphered in the early 1950s (it turned out to represent an early form of Greek), Linear A, above, has still not been deciphered."
"There is an entire culture of information that predates much of our history, a window into ancient humanity that is simply locked away from us because we don't know how to read it."
Atamask
Exact Dates
"An active one in the archaeology world is the exact time frame of when humans made it to the Americas. The date keeps getting pushed back with more controversial discoveries that then just turn to evidence as they pile up. It’s a fascinating story to see unfold."
DocAuch22
"Yeah I like this one too, I think many of the traces of early settlement are likely submerged. Sea levels were much lower during the ice age and the majority of human settlements are along the coasts so a huge piece of our history is probably lying on the seafloor completely undisturbed and possibly well preserved."
who519
Monarchs
"So the Monarch Butterfly migrates to Mexico and back every year. During the year there are a full 4 generations of butterflies that live and die during the journey. Upon returning back from Mexico, the butterfly manages to find the same trees it's relative started out at despite never having been there."
MasonS98
Dark Energy
Loop Space GIF by xponentialdesignGiphy"We like to think we understand the universe and that physics is a well grounded discipline, and in some ways it is. However we have no idea what dark matter or dark energy is and yet we think it makes up 27% and 68% of the universe respectively."
Ok_Passenger_4202
The Universe is vast and scary, like the sea.
The End
Kimmy Schmidt Netflix GIF by Unbreakable Kimmy SchmidtGiphy"The final words of the emperor Titus were 'I have but one regret'. We don't know and never will what that regret was."
Ayearinbooks
5000 BCE
"That most of human history is undocumented and we will never know our entire history as a species. We didn’t start recording our history until 5000 BCE, we do know we shifted to agrarian societies around 10,000 BCE but beyond that we have no idea what we were like as a species, we will never know the undocumented parts of our history that spans 10s of thousands of years."
"We are often baffled by the technological progress of our ancient ancestors, like those in SE Asia who must have been masters of the sea to have colonized the variety of islands there and sailed vast stretches of ocean to land on Australia and New Zealand."
"What is ironic is we currently have an immense amount of information about our world today and the limited documented history of our early days as a species but that is only a small fraction of our entire history."
patlaff91
How Big?
"I don't know about 'biggest,' but I always thought the Voynich Manuscript was very interesting. A huge book written in an unknown language or cipher that has never been translated or decoded with diagrams of plant species that don't exist. Lots of theories surrounding it, but no definitive answers as to the origins or the content."
AbortionSurvivor777
Who made it?
"Not sure if it's THE biggest mystery. But the Antikythera mechanism is pretty wild."
"Dated to at least 60BC, possibly as old as 200BC, it's as complex as clockworks that didn't show up until the 1400s, over a millennium later!"
"It's just such a strange technological anomaly. Who made it? What else did they make and why haven't we found more stuff as advanced?"
SmokedMessias
Magic Tins
Video Recycle GIF by Jenny LorenzoGiphy"Why did we all just globally decide that those blue Dutch cookie tins hold sewing supplies?"
MysteriousStaff3388
"They’re large enough to hold sewing scissors, along with other notions, and made of metal so that the scissors and needles can’t poke through them. Or at least that’s the consensus r/sewing seems to have come to."
butter_milk
My grandma had like 20 of those tins.
Good times.
Do you have any mysteries to add? Let us know in the comments below.
Redditor onlyusemefeets wanted to hear about the worst of everyone's family, so they asked:
"When did you find out that someone in your family is evil?"
The Reddit community rose to the occasion to shed some light on their family skeletons.
Money Issues
Wild West Fighting GIF by Buyout FootageGiphy"When they ripped apart 3 generations of my family almost immediately after my dad died for a measly $37,000. He's a millionaire. That kinda money is pocket change to him."
Good Lord
"When my 11 year old cousin got cancer."
"Her mom and boyfriend were shooting up her pain medicine. My cousin was in so much pain, she told her Doctors. Thats when the doctors stopped giving her mom a prescription and the nurses dispensed her pain meds at the hospital. Unfortunately they could not keep track of medication while at home so they reported it."
"CPS removed her. She died shortly after in foster care. Parents were never charged."
dead-parrots
Death
"When my dad died of covid my Aunt tried to say she was entitled to some stuff of his since it belonged in the family. She even called a lawyer on us and it was big deal and my mom didn't need to deal with that trying to raise 3 kids on her own so f**k her. She still bothers us about stuff and all it is like plates and some pictures and some other things."
"Sunken Cost Fallacy"
"My brother's addiction has led to him spinning some ridiculous stories. I'm not sure if he is very convincing or if my father chooses to believe him because of some 'sunken cost fallacy,' or he genuinely refuses to give up. But my brother has told lies and stories about me and my siblings to the point that he's the only child who talks to my father anymore. He convinced my father that I forced him to do drugs."
"But I knew my brother was evil when scared away my sister with physical violence. Last month, he went missing for a weeks only to turn up after flipping his car high on pills. My father doesn't know it yet, but my mother is planning on leaving him because my father chooses my brother over her. No one can convince my father that he's enabling. No one can convince my brother to stop. Hard drugs really destroy entire families."
sleepypanda59
A New Family
Frustrated Skip Bayless GIFGiphy"When he purposely excluded his 4 year old son (from a previous relationship) from his wedding to his new spouse, deleted all photos of his son from his social media, and legally signed away all parental rights. He has since had 2 more kids with said new spouse."
FeminaCanadiana
How can parents act that way?
Failure...
"I don't know about evil, but my dad got remarried and has a kid and stepson with his new spouse. All of that would be fine if he didn't pretend that none of us (offspring from first marriage) exist so he can pretend this family is the first family and we never happened."
"Once this realization hit me, I stopped contacting him, and once I stopped putting in the effort, everything else dissipated. We haven't spoken at all. He does not care in the least. I honestly believe that he wishes we never even existed. He is a failure as a father and as a man."
Raindrops_On-Roses
Oh Brother
"When my husband's brother (1 of 5 siblings) said he couldn't make it to our house to plan their mother's funeral because he had to work. Meanwhile we found out he wasn't working because we caught him on ring doorbell entering the moms house to rifle through it while the rest of us were planning the funeral at my house."
Legitimate_Energy257
The End
"When my ex said 'you've been a godsend, I want a divorce.' I had taken time off from work to take care of her parents. She told me this right before her dad died, and she inherited. She found a boyfriend while I was with her parents. She got the house by declaring I had abandoned it. I was with her parents."
rollercoaster_5
Evil
Season 5 Nickelodeon GIFGiphy"When my dad tried to throw my 6 month old sister when he was drunk. That man is a monster in disguise"
iinattanii
So many people really need to be screened for their abilities to raise kids.