This question has been really upsetting me recently.

I have been invited to a family event that I was happy to sort my own travel and sleeping arrangements to. Namely a train and sleeping in my chair, but there’s nothing new there in the world of inaccessibility. However someone said they would find away for me to travel with other members of my family, and they just haven’t.

I’m so used to not being able to travel with them, that it never crossed my mind that I would be able to, until the idea was suggested to me. Now it feels like my opportunity to be part of the family has been taken from me.

I know that may sound dramatic, but that’s honestly how it feels.

Did I mention that part of the new improved travel plan that my family member wants me to use, involves getting a taxi. When you’re a wheelchair users there’s no garuntee that I’ll be able to get in any taxi. And this just feels like a complication I don’t want to deal with on top of everything else

I thought for once I would get to be part of a family event, without feeling like I’m in the way. I thought that my family were willing to go a little bit out of the way to make me feel this way. I guess I was wrong.

Sometimes I think the world’s only accessible to me if I stay home, and then I realise just how inaccessible the world must be to me for me to think that way.

This is just one of many times people close to me have said they’ll include me like it’s no big deal, and then when it comes to the practicalities of them actually including me, it becomes a big deal. To the point where I’m not sure I even want to go this time.

But this time I don’t really have the option not to go, well I do but it’s a little more complicated. As my sister wants to go, if I didn’t go I would be left home alone, with the dogs. This would mean that I would need to cancel the carers even if I don’t go to the party, as it wouldn’t be fair for me to drop my sister from going to a party she wants to go to. So I would be home with the dogs and stuck in my wheelchair for a long period of time anyway.