So here I am: it’s Tuesday, I’m full of whatever illness my friends at college have gifted me and I’ve somehow been bothered to make it to my 2 hour Korean lesson. The day’s going well. (This blog is going to be pretty emotionally-charged by the way: strap in).

What I didn’t need added to my day, was some old, male, traffic warden peering through my windscreen whilst I was STILL IN MY CAR, to check if my disabled badge was a fraud. For the record, it’s weird and intimidating to have a stranger looking inside your car whilst you’re still in there. But the core of my annoyance, was the fact that I’m sick and tired of the disabled parking bays situation.

Now, if you aren’t disabled, or don’t have any close relatives or friends who are, then you might be thinking: what situation? Is there even a situation?

Well, my dear reader, yes there bloody well is a situation. And it’s one that has made my parents furious for years before me, but now I also have the joy of being angered by it too. Lucky me!

So it’s simple, right? You go to any public space and most of the time there are parking bays with bright yellow hatching, and the universally recognised symbol for disability. Everyone knows that that then marks those parking bays as exclusively for people who need it i.e. ones who own a blue badge issued by the government, indicating that they’re legally recognised as disabled. I won’t go too into it now, but trust me when I say that you don’t just get that badge. You have to undergo what is in my experience, an insanely gruelling, somewhat traumatising process so as to be recognised by the government as ‘eligible’ for it. But I’ll write a blog detailing that process another day- look forward to that one, it’s a corker.

Anyway: you need a disabled badge to park in the space closest to the destination, seen as it’s predominantly the people who’re disabled who’re unable to access things and places easily. Surprise!

Why is it then that when my dad dropped me off at Secondary school, on average only 2 out of about 8 disabled bays had cars with blue badges in them? One of which was my dad’s car. With my badge. I’d also like to add the information that my school was attached to a Special Needs school: attended by children with severe disabilities, whose parents probably needed to use those parking spaces when picking them up.

Why is it that this also happens every time I go to a supermarket, a shop, or just anywhere really? Why did I have to ask the receptionist at my University college today – a college which prides itself on diversity and acceptance – to ask the woman who uses a bay every week and doesn’t display a badge, to please park somewhere else?

You might wonder why this is so offensive to me. Or, like the traffic warden, think me ‘silly’ for even being offended by it. (His patronising choice of words really added to the moment, I must say).

It’s offensive because when people park in these spaces, they’re not thinking of how insanely immoral and unfair what they’re doing is. Those spaces are for people who literally need them. People who can’t walk that extra few steps to the building. People who need equipment to move and to live. People who have in recent years had to fight so hard, just to be deemed ‘eligible’ by the government for things that they need to survive.

If you park in those bays when you don’t need to, then you’re depriving a disabled person of their right to get on with their life and to be independent. I’m not always in a wheelchair, and on the surface it appears that I walk pretty well, but if I can’t park in those bays then I might have to walk a distance which will cause me to develop an infection, and to go in a wheelchair for months on end. So if that’s what’s at stake for me, then think about the people who’re wheelchair bound and what that space might mean to them.

Again, this might sound like an overreaction, but trust me when I say that it’s not.

It’s not just the walking distance, it’s also the backlash that comes from people abusing those spaces. Namely, the fact that it creates a culture of doubt. If those spaces were respected, then I wouldn’t have had some old man looking into my car to see if I was lying today. I wouldn’t have had him looking me in the eyes in disbelief as to why I was asking him not to do that. He told me that he was checking the disabled badge ‘for’ me: to ‘help’ me. I obviously understand why he checks, but I resent the fact that he thought I would lie.

So I appeal to you, to think about your actions and to just park somewhere else. Just walk those extra steps. Not just because you have the physical ability to do it, but also because I would never ask for something that I don’t need. I don’t abuse the system, in fact I probably don’t use it enough. But I need to park there. And I’m tired of defending my right to that space.