To the elderly people who wouldn’t move out of the wheelchair space on the bus, for me a wheelchair user. I would feel bad for swearing at you if you didn’t wave as the bus drove away.
To the bus driver, who tried to get them to move but gave in and just wouldn’t let me on the bus, grow a backbone and enforce the rules, that’s part of your job.
To the person reading this, who thinks I was too harsh, while I admit I acted in emotion and not logic, being older doesn’t make you right or deserving of special treatment.
To the person who doesn’t understand why this made me so upset, in part it’s just because it was yet another thing today, but missing this bus has also ruined my plans for the day. It’s pushed me back at least an hour due to connecting buses.
To the people who aren’t reliant on public transport, driving isn’t so easy for me, both physically and financially, that is to say if I could do it all. Access to public transport is not only my freedom, but my right.
The bus has been reported, not that I think it’ll actually do any good. And I’m now sat here waiting for the next one, hoping it comes in time to not delay the next part of my journey, that is of course, if I can get on it at all.
But unfortunately, public transport is rarely built for us to do this. And neither our taxis, in reality.
The truth is society doesn’t really seem to want disabled people to travel anywhere, never mind together. but sometimes we’ve got to do what we’ve go to do just like everybody else sometimes travelling with the disabled people.
It’s funny, in that way that’s not funny, that I’m here justifying travelling as a necessity, because doing any thing for fun is just unthinkable as a disabled person.
But public transport really needs to be accommodating of more than one visibly disabled person at a time. Can you image if it only accommodated one (visibly) non-disabled person at a time? Society would all be mad and be saying it’s a waste of money, but when it’s disabled people it’s justifiable.
To make matters worse society often pushes disabled people together, especially when we’re young, they believe we should all be friends. And maybe that’s because they don’t want us to be friend with non-disabled people, but they don’t want to feel guilty for us having no friends.
I don’t know if this is true, but it is something I’ve always believed. I’ve definitely had non-disabled people introduce me to disabled people with the assumption that we’re going to be friends just because we’re both disabled.
And then they create a society that’s not designed to have us in it together. Which honestly makes no sense.
So today, I pushed myself to do a lot, I went out of my way to be there for different people in my family. And as my wife always runs on the schedule of my carers, I had to fit doing what I could into them.
Honestly, that’s one thing. I don’t think people consider about getting carers, is how regimented your life has to become as a result. You have to do things at the same time every day regardless of what is thrown at you during that day that might change that. On this day, it was simply taking something that had been forgotten by one person to another, but I had to fit that into everything else I had to do and fit that into my care as well.
I like to do as much as I can for other people, it’s probably some internalised ableist part of me that wants to feel useful because I need so much help off others. As there isn’t much I can do for others, I want to be sure that what I do I do properly.
As I have to get public transport everywhere this can be quite difficult to do when it involves going to different places as it did today. But I do the best I can, and just hope I’m useful.
This Tiktok explains the situation I had to deal with on Sunday 25th August while getting the bus to travel home.
So after long days which really tested the battery of my chair, I had to get specific routes home which meant I wouldn’t have to travel long distances in my chair. The video above shows me doing so on one evening to be blocked at the bus stop by a vehicle parking where it shouldn’t.
It always surprises me, but it probably shouldn’t anymore, that public transport is generally only designed for one person in a wheelchair to use at a time. We don’t in fact all know each other and coordinate when we need to do things together, contrary to popular belief.
As I write this I’m on a bus on the way to pick up some medication for a family member, I like to be useful and it’s not often I can do that without actually being in the way, but today happens to be one of those days.
There was someone else that wanted to get on the bus in a wheelchair, but they couldn’t because I’m already on it. I feel bad as if somewhere it’s my fault, even though logically I know that it isn’t because I didn’t design the buses. But can you imagine if the roles were reversed?
If public transport was only designed to take one non- disabled person at a time? How annoyed would they be at having to wait for a bus with a space on all the time?
But it doesn’t matter that disabled people have to wait. It doesn’t matter that wheelchair users can never go out with other friends in wheelchairs when they need to use public transport. We almost always have to meet them at the place we’re going. We don’t get the full experince.
This is made even worse when you realise that society actually pushes disabled people together. They think it would be easier for us all to be friends at a young age, because no one who isn’t disabled should have to be friends with someone who is. But then don’t create a society where you’re actually able to do things as friends. It’s just weird to me.
Take now as I start this post, I am on a bus, and the people I’m with decided to go sit at the back. I know there are supposed to be the better seats on the bus, but I can only sit in one place on the bus, and there were seats near me when we got on, I’d be lying if I said their choice doesn’t bother me. How can it not?
They could have chosen to sit with me, but they didn’t. And every little time someone makes this choice, it reinforces what I think I’ve always known, I’m not more important than the better option.
My disability is an inconvenience to them, to be honest, it is to me as well, but I can’t escape it. They can though, and worse than that, they choose to. I don’t know if it’s made better or worse by the fact I can’t blame them though.
I just wish society made being with me the easier option.
Image Description: A photo of a cinema screen showing the BBC Doctor Who logo with “interval 15 minutes, special message commences in” written on it and a timer counting down.
So this is another backdated post. Yesterday turned out to be quite busy day. After I posted a similar post to my recent Train post on this blog, on TikTok. That got a little popular so I mainly spent the day replying to those comments and getting ready to watch Doctor Who.
No, this is not a blog about Doctor Who so I’ll just say it was an experience and I recommend you watch it. I will definitely be watching it again.
And I don’t really have the energy now to write about the backlash I have faced from the Train post. But I wanted to sort summarise some things up.
First of all, children are optional. You choose to have them, or you choose to keep them. if you are in a situation where this is not optional for you this is because the option has been taken from you not because the act of having children isn’t optional. If you disagree with the statement, I don’t think this blog is for you, and that’s okay.
Second of all, wheelchair spaces are not also also buggy spaces. They can be used by people with buggies if no one in a wheelchair needs them, but they are intended for use by people in wheelchairs therefore they should and often do in policy get priority in these spaces. They are certainly not storage spaces. Again, if you disagree with this, this isn’t the blog for you.
If anyone would like me to share more on this issue, let me know. I’m happy to share links to my posts on TikTok if you would like to see them.
The problem with relying on people and technology is things can simple go wrong and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Yesterday my wheelchair died when I was miles away from home. It died because it hadn’t been plugged in the night before. Even though I am not the person that plugs it in at night, this is of course my fault because I should have checked they had done it. It’s just one of those things that usually gets done correctly and so I forget that I should check on it. To be fair they had plugged it in just not switched it on at the wall.
Either way it didn’t charge and I was stuck. Which I am actually somewhat relieved about because yesterday I wasn’t sure if my chair was broken and that’s why I was stuck. It having no battery is an easy problem to deal with.
The only way for me to get home then was paying £145 in a taxi. As when my chair has no power everything that was previously accessible to me, like trains, my planned way to get home, becomes inaccessible. And because I can’t just get into any vehicle, no one could come and pick me up, so a taxi was the only option.
Now taxis have to be up there with the least accessible mode of transport for me, alongside other cars. While it is possible to find accessible taxis, like I did yesterday. This can be very difficult to do.
Many taxis say they’re wheelchair accessible but will only take people who can get out of there wheelchair and fold it into the boot. I cannot do this. So for me this is not a wheelchair accessible taxis. I have even had taxis come and then refuse me, despite specifying before hand that I wouldn’t be able to do this. But you know how people love to blame you when they don’t listen.
Accessibly means different things to different people and companies.
Emergencies happen, things go wrong and get forgotten. But when they go wrong with my chair it’s honestly terrifying.
You’re going on a cross-country trip. Airplane, train, bus, car, or bike?
The freedom people get when they are not disabled will probably never cease to amaze me. The freedom just to answer questions like this, to not be stopped by who they are when they try to do so.
Many of these modes of transport aren’t accessible to me, and those that require planning.
As a full time wheelchair user, an airplane is not accessible to me, it is simply too risky. If you don’t understand what I’m talking about, then you are lucky.
While a train is generally accessible to me, with assistance. There’s no guarantee that all the stations I may want to go to are accessible to me. In fact from experience, money aren’t, and this often determines exactly where I will travel.
While buses at least in my area are accessible to me, they are only accessible to me if there isn’t already someone in a wheelchair on the bus. One day, the people that designed for which transport might learn that multiple disabled people can and often do travel at the same time.
Certain cars are accessible to me, but not many. I cannot just get a lift off anyone. And while I can learn to drive a specifically adapted vehicle, to do get the vehicle would cost me money I don’t have. This is before I even know whether driving is something I would be physically capable of.
I’m going to just say that we bike is concerned, I cannot ride one and we’ll leave it at that.
You don’t travel to a place on a journey, you visit that place as well. Accessibility doesn’t stop in modes of transport.
The world isn’t generally accessible for people like me in various many ways. I don’t really get to explore questions like this, without an element of ignoring reality. There’s a word for this, which took me as surprising amount of time to remember at 3:30 am. Cognitive Dissonance.
I think somebody’s gonna read this and wonder why did I take it so seriously? It’s obviously one of those writing prompts like what would you do if you won the lottery? Reality isn’t really supposed to be considered in these situations.
But I’m not really good considering reality when someone asks me these questions. I’m not really good at the cognitive dissonance. I’m thinking about myself and situations I might be in. My disability is such an integral part of who I am and the experiences I have. That it’s hard to separate myself from it, even in the situations.
I suppose I don’t really know what it’s like to think as a non-disabled person. I don’t really understand what it means to have that freedom on any level, whether that be thought or reality, it doesn’t seem to matter.
Maybe if I had a bit more freedom, in reality, it might be something that would reach my imagination, a little bit easier. Then perhaps I could answer these questions as they were intended to be answered.
The only way I reach this level of freedom in thought, as I am sometimes able to reflect in my writing, is to completely distance myself from the thought. In reality, my freedom is always limited by the world around me and there is nothing I can do about it. As soon as I put myself in the situation, my reality hits again, and I am limited by it.
Please forgive the state of this post as my sleep deprived brain is unable to reread it and make sure it actually makes any sense at all.
So my family tend to go to a cafe every Monday. My dad picks everyone up, and drives them there. Apart from me and my sister who get the bus.
Now she gets the bus because I get the bus, on the times I haven’t gone, my dad has picked her up.
But the reason I get the bus is because my dad’s car is not accessible to me. This is a choice my dad has made. When I was a child he had accessible vehicles for me, but as soon as I was able to use public transport for myself he got rid of them because he didn’t want them. And I didn’t need him to get around as I good do it myself now. This was his understanding of the situation, not mine.
My Inaccessible Life 