When young healthy looking people park in handicap spots.

I bet you are expecting me to disparage them. I’m not. I’m one of them. I want to explain, to help you understand your judgment needs to stop.

I am 41. I don’t appear disabled at all. But I have sinus tachycardia (the same heart condition that ended my dad’s life at 66 years old), and intracranial hypertension (a neurological condition). You will not see this when I step out of my car.

Climbing a flight of stairs knocks the wind out of me and takes an hour to slow my heart rate down from. Just bending down then getting up too quickly makes me lose breath because my heart rate is constantly way too fast. You will not witness this as I walk into a store. You may not even see it after I climb the stairs, because I have gotten good at hiding it as I push my lungs to soak in long slow breaths that hurt down deep and make me feel light headed. Most you might see is my face flushing.

I also cannot do too much activity without paying for it. My spine produces too much CSF fluid. That fluid crushes the nerves in my spine and head, is making me slowly go blind, lose coherent speech, lose thought processing, lose function of my hands and legs, and is damaging my brain. But I work as a production assistant on film sets. I run around a lot, and heft extremely heavy things. You won’t see my condition when…