As early as I could remember, I’ve been conditioned to believe that being an overachiever ensures success. But after I gave birth, my postpartum blues didn’t gradually decrease — they got louder. So loud that I felt disconnected from my family and myself.
I’m a late-diagnosed Black woman living with ADHD, PMDD, anxiety, depression, and CPTSD. For years, I tried to function without medication because that’s what I was taught to do. However, mental illness runs in my immediate family and I wanted to break the generational curse of not addressing it. After almost two years of mental health prescriptions, the few interruptions I’ve had have made me reflect on how vulnerable and raw I’ve been navigating society.
It’s hard to explain to people who’ve never lived with invisible disabilities how hard it is to live life. I second-guess everything. My insomnia spikes. My executive functioning short-circuits. My friendships suffered because I became distant and disappeared without notice. My need for constant dopamine dominates my day because I have to force myself to focus — which leads to procrastination, perfectionism, and a nonstop struggle to balance parenthood, adulting, and maintaining boundaries.
Medication gave me my life back. It gave me balance. It made me functional in ways I hadn’t been before. I could finally see things clearly and the background noise was gone.
Then the insurance credits disappeared.
As a freelance writer, I’ve held more contract positions than W2s at this point, placing me squarely in the gig/creative economy. Marketplace insurance wasn’t a luxury for me; it was my lifeline. All it took was sixty days for that to unravel. In the first thirty days, my medication costs went up. Three months later, my insurance lapsed. The tax credits that had made my plan affordable were eliminated. What had been manageable became a $600 monthly insurance bill and a $1,000 quote for a single prescription.
Every calendar month, my anxiety spikes because I have to juggle an already stretched budget to afford the medication I need to survive. I’ve tried to reason with myself because I’ve been unmedicated before; maybe I could do it again? But I couldn’t. What I experienced without medication isn’t just discomfort. It feels like a system failure. Invisible disabilities in an ableist society make you an invisible punching bag because I’m expected to perform neurotypical productivity while managing conditions that most people will never see and never acknowledge.
Black women are already undertreated for mental health and maternal health conditions at disproportionate rates. The marketplace credits saved lives and without them, many feel like they are on borrowed time. Mental health treatment isn’t optional for those of us who are neurodivergent. For people like me, it is the difference between functioning and falling apart — between showing up for my daughter and disappearing into myself — not a political agenda.
Policymakers who treat healthcare access as an economic line item have never had to choose between groceries and the medication that keeps them present in their own life.
I have. Every month now, I do.
Erika Hardison (she/her) is a Chicago-born cultural journalist, critic, and founder of Fabulize Magazine. A Lambda Literary Award finalist and Schomburg Center moderator for nearly a decade, her work has appeared in Reactor, Publishers Weekly, USA Today Reviewed, and HelloBeautiful. She is currently writing So You Think You Know Static with University Press of Mississippi.
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