Today I want to share something very personal. Something that was, in many ways, harder for me to admit to myself and to others than being gay. My disability. It is frustrating how easily people dismiss disability when they see a young person. I cannot count how many times I have heard “but you are so young” as if youth automatically means health or if illness only becomes real when visible. I wear a sunflower lanyard, which represents disabilities, that are not obvious from the outside. In my case it means AuDHD, cPTSD and anxiety. It also means that standing or walking for more than 15 minutes can become painful, and also means bowel problems. But here is the painful part. When I do not wear the lanyard, people treat me as if I cannot possibly be disabled. I am just a young guy, who looks “normal”. So people cross boundaries, question or judge me. For several times I have been pushed out of disabled toilets just because some people decided that I was not disabled enough. And when I do wear the lanyard, often people treat me as if I am less intelligent or less adult. Withouth the lanyard, I am not disabled enough. With the lanyard, I am too disabled. And somewhere between those two projections, the real me disappears. This is something I have experienced not only in general, but also inside communities that should know better. Even within gay spaces, once people see the lanyard, the distance appears. The conversation changes. And that hurts a lot. Apart of being gay, or disabled, I’m also a refugee. Often, each community understands or accepts only a part of me rather than the whole, judging the other sides. I do not want to hide my full identity inside a community that knows what it means to hide parts of yourself just to survive or fit better. So I end up belonging everywhere and nowhere at the same time. I just wish people understood that invisible does not mean imaginary and that the world is more than just black and white.