Category: Uncategorized

Who are you dating? Me or my feet?

Who are you dating? Me or my feet?

by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 1 Comment

Recently, a stranger left a comment on my TikTok asking me when and how I tell people I’ve dated about my disability. At first, I saw the message and thought well that’s a great question, let me give it some proper time and attention, rather than fire my camera up right now as my housemate and I eat another snack one of us found in the reduced section. But then this is such a nuanced question for me that even after filming a 2-minute video, I don’t feel like I properly answered it. So here I am, not slumped on the sofa with a biscuit in my hand, giving it some focused thought.

I find introducing my disability to new people very complicated – for lots of reasons. Although I had to give plenty of explanations of it to friends as a teenager, I also went to the same school with the same people pretty much all the way through. Therefore, whilst they might not have known or particularly cared to know the details of how my condition can affect me, they did see me in a wheelchair at points when blisters or footwear had caused me some issues. They had also spent years growing up alongside me, so they knew me way more than just as a physically disabled person. In fact, half of the time I had to remind them of my Spina Bifida because even my closest friends would often forget that it was a thing at all.

Then I went traveling and onto university, where I experienced intense but very short friendships with people; an exercise in distilling myself and my disability into words to try to gain understanding in a very short period of time. Some individuals were amazing and I felt more listened to than I had even within my childhood friendships, and others were very dismissive. But the thing with my disability is that I put so much into maintaining the condition of my feet to ensure that I don’t have that many problems, that this can lead to it seeming like I don’t actually have many problems. Therefore, I’ve often felt that in order for people to believe that I’m not exaggerating, they need to see it get worse. But, as the one who’d have the bandage on their foot, I’d rather not go there – I’d still like to feel understood though.

So in the context of dating, it’s really tricky. I’ve definitely never opened with it because unfortunately, people have preconceptions and make very silly assumptions about disabilities in general, let alone about dating somebody with a disability. For example, one of the big assumptions is that if we’re together, the lad’s going to become my full-time carer and ultimately end up sobbing next to me when I’m in a hospital bed. Like babes, maybe ask me some questions about it first before we jump straight to a Hollywood catastrophe. But I also can’t not mention it because you have to know about it to know about me.

***I’d like to specify here that a lot of the time, individuals don’t even acknowledge that they have these preconceptions about disability; these aren’t things anyone ever says out loud, it’s just a narrative that’s knocking about society which we rarely address. I mean, some people say it out loud, but that’s just because they’re —–

Honestly, I think that I still don’t really know how to tell someone about my disability because I don’t think it can be effectively explained using words. Yes, I can give you the rundown and list off my operations, but those tales sound like catastrophe after catastrophe and don’t always feel like an accurate reflection of my life. Plus, were you actively listening when I told you? Like with anyone, you have to invest time in me to get to know me and you’re only going to understand how my Spina Bifida impacts my life if I let you see it.

Without a shadow of a doubt, in any relationship I’m in, it’ll probably come as a bit of a shock to the lad if the condition of my feet goes south because it’ll highlight just how much I do on a day-to-day basis to avoid that. However, you’d hope that if we have to go there, we’d be into each other enough for him to be more than happy to drive me to the hospital, pick up my antibiotics, and help me hop around the house until my foot heals. Just like you would if your girlfriend randomly broke her leg.

If society didn’t think of physical disabilities as life-destroying and a huge burden on people’s lives, then I wouldn’t hesitate to tell a lad about it on a date because I’m not ashamed of my body, or how I have to take care of it. But that’s not the world we live in. So I cover my shoes until I work out whether it’s relevant to the conversation because it’s not always helpful to share everything about yourself all at once. And like everyone, I’ll be able to work out after the first few dates whether you could potentially be right for me, and that’ll include whether I think you’d have an issue with being with someone disabled. I might not always be right, but I do think it’s sensible to give it at least a few hours to feel everything else out before we workshop the medical history.

Trust me, I know how tedious I can be

Trust me, I know how tedious I can be

by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

The other week I was talking to my housemates in our kitchen about some silly romantic situation I’d gotten myself into, asking them for advice, and then in a lull in the conversation, I said ‘if you’re ever listening to me tell my tales, and you start thinking that I’m tedious, just know that I’m fully aware that I am’.

We laughed.

For all my confidence in myself and security in many aspects of my personality, I know that I can really over-egg a point. I can talk for England once you’ve got me going and even though I try my very utmost to ensure that everything I say is of interest to the listener, I acknowledge that sometimes my energy levels can be too much even for some of the people closest to me. I try to monitor it and often I think that I give myself a much harder time about it than necessary, because I know that a lot of those close to me would describe me as a good listener as well as a good talker. But one thing I’ll always appreciate about my closest friends is that they know that sometimes I just need to go off on a monologue because if I don’t say my thoughts out loud, then they’ll spiral in my head and it’ll end in tears. Ugly tears.

But I don’t ever want to feel like a burden to other people – physically or emotionally – so in those moments when I do just feel like emotionally puking, I need to know that the person I speak to won’t judge me for it.

The type of ‘tedious’ monologues I’m talking about here is when you need to workshop your stresses about work, your PMS-induced intrusive thoughts, your anxiety about thinking you’re starting to like someone and not knowing how to play it, or when you just want to sit and reminisce about that time when you were 16 and your science lesson was hilarious. Basically, the times when you’re bored of sitting in your own mind, hearing your thoughts whizz around, and you need a human connection without conditions. However, trusting someone with this very personal and vulnerable part of yourself takes a lot because you can never really tell if they’re going to think less of you for showing them it.

For example, most of the people in my life who I’m closest to now are, and have always been, very different from me; bar maybe three, they’re all introverts who’d much prefer sitting on their own reading a book than having to engage in conversation with anyone. So I know that my (occasionally) highly strung expression of emotion can be exhausting for them and there have been times when I’ve felt guilty for that part of myself. But I do believe that supposedly ‘negative’ aspects of someone’s personality can have positive implications and my tendency to sometimes get myself overly worked up about things only happens because I care so deeply. Therefore, my most trusted friends and family members have never made me feel like I can’t open up to them when I need to – even though they miiiight have sometimes preferred the conversation to last 20 minutes less.

Then again, perhaps that last bit of the sentence was unnecessary self-deprecation. Knowing my lot, if they read this then I’m about to get some messages in capslock telling me to never think like that, because if I’ve gotta talk then they’re there to listen. I’d do the same for them, only everyone’s preferred type of support isn’t the same, so whilst my therapy is nattering, I know that some of my closest friends might just need me to sit next to them and be silly whilst we watch a movie. Regardless of the actions though, it’s about showing up for people in the way that they need and making it very clear that this is a no ! judgement ! zone ! because nobody should feel ashamed of venting when they need to vent.

Don’t worry about it

Don’t worry about it

by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Last week was not my favourite week. I started things off the way I usually do, posting a blog and preparing for another few days of working a silly amount of jobs in various parts of London. The blog was about how comfortable I feel with the image of my shoes, so naturally, I wear a skirt with my callipers out on the day I post it, to keep a level of consistency in my words and my actions. But to my disappointment, I go out to have a drink with my friend and notice more people obnoxiously staring at my shoes in one afternoon than in the last few weeks put together.

Now it could be that because I’d just written and posted that blog, people staring at my callipers was on my mind so I was always going to notice it more than I normally might. Regardless though, I ended up feeling pretty horrid because that degree of ignorant gawking continued everywhere I went for most of the week.

When I mention to people that my shoes get stared at, they most of the time can’t believe it; they just don’t see how my callipers warrant that sort of reaction. Which, I agree with, but I still get people walking into walls or falling off of bikes because they’re so captivated by those metal bars coming up my shins. I’ve also had some very sweet reactions where some have said that it’s not my shoes that people are staring at, it’s me. A lovely sentiment, but there’s a very clear difference when people are looking at my shoes versus me, and that’s whether we make eye contact at any point because when the disability is the focus, people rarely take notice of the person with it.

And maybe I’m an optimist, but I don’t believe that every person who obnoxiously looks at my callipers is thinking enough about what they’re doing to be vilified for it. By this, I mean that having a disability tends to come with this unspoken responsibility to explain yourself to others whenever they ask and in as much detail as they want to hear – or at least that’s how I’ve felt at points. It’s this assumption that because I look physically different to others, and have to wear a visibly strange piece of clothing, people are entitled to stare at it, ask what it is, why I wear it, and whatever other questions they might have, and I’m obliged to answer.

Up until very recently, I always adhered to this social pressure. Partly, I think, because I’m used to listing off the government and institution-friendly descriptions of my disability which reduce everything to small sentences specifying what I can’t do so that I can get a green tick that yes, she’s disabled and she does need this help. But I also prefer answering the questions – even if they do get a little intimate sometimes – because I’d rather have that conversation than watch somebody stare at my shoes from across the room. If I can talk about it, then I feel more human and less like a circus freak.

People being obnoxious and staring at my shoes will never stop. Neither will the need for me to reel off my medical history to strangers for access to buildings or services, or just for general understanding. I’ll also get a few foul comments made to me when in conversation or on the street because that’s just how people are sometimes. For the rest of my life, I’ll have weeks like this week when I cannot be arsed with having Spina Bifida and how that can make the world act towards me, but that’s not news. It doesn’t mean that people shouldn’t do and be better when it comes to the treatment and perception of disability, but I can’t change everything overnight so if I’ve got to get upset about how judged I’ve felt in an afternoon every now and then, then that’s totally fine too.

…

The other day I was walking out of the BBC to my car in one of the disabled spaces and I saw a man staring at my shoes as I came towards him. I counted the seconds it took me to walk that distance and it reached 47 seconds. 47 seconds he was staring at my shoes until I passed him so he couldn’t anymore. He didn’t look up once. But you know what? I had places to be, so leave it.

Forcing myself to like this

Forcing myself to like this

by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Something I get asked a lot when I speak about my disability is whether I’m proud to have it, and if you’ve read more than one of these blogs then you may already know that that is a bit of a complicated question for me. My immediate reaction is to say ‘no’ because I’m not so much proud of the disability itself – given that the Spina Bifida in isolation contributes to 80% of the stresses in my life – though I am probably proud of how I deal with it. But even then, I don’t really know that that’s anything to be actively proud of because I can’t be or live any other way. Maybe you judge that as me thinking too far into it, but I just don’t see these well-intentioned attempts by able-bodied people to understand what it’s like to have a disability as leading to one-sentence responses.

And one aspect of my opinion of my disability which will definitely throw people – especially given how I present myself on social media – is the way I feel about how my shoes look. If you watch my videos then you may assume that I don’t really care about people seeing my shoes, but the reality is that by doing these videos and showing my callipers at the end of them, that’s me making an active effort to like how they, and my legs in them, look. Acceptance of their image when I’m wearing my shoes definitely doesn’t come naturally to me.

I think what’s at the heart of that is that I’ve never considered myself as disabled by my body – unless I’m in a hospital gown, putting a bandage on, or in a wheelchair, and even in those moments the extent of my disability has always caught me off guard which is what makes the experience so traumatic. That probably sounds quite strange, though. That I have times when I pull my car into a disabled space, put the handbrake up, and sit there thinking ‘lol it’s kinda weird that I’m actually disabled’ as I put my blue badge on my dashboard.

Maybe it’s because I don’t have any pain and because my disability doesn’t affect my mind or my appearance unless I look down, that I’ve always been so good at ignoring it – a lot of times to my own detriment but hey, we do what we can. So it’s only when I’m confronted by my reflection in a shop window or in videos and photographs that I actually see my disabled body. And I’ll be honest, I don’t like it. What I see is all the minute details of my Spina Bifida: my left foot curving inwards because the operations never quite worked, a slight limp as I move, and the unusual (kinda jarring) shape of my metal callipers against my legs. So, for a very long time, I just didn’t look because I didn’t want to know – still now, even after all these Instagram and TikTok videos, you’ll probably see me bow my head if I have to walk toward a full-length mirror or a shop window and I still ask my mum to take the photograph from the waist up.

I’m getting better though! I don’t actually flinch if I see myself walking in videos or a reflection anymore – I’d still probably rather not see it, but it doesn’t sting my self-esteem quite so much now.

My parents can get very frustrated with me when I’ve brought this kind of thing up because it hurts them that there’s a part of myself that I’m still struggling to accept; I remember my mum saying to me once (through love and irritation) that there’s nothing wrong with my callipers making me look disabled because I am, and will always be disabled, so that’s just what I look like. And she’s right. But society says that that’s bad, that’s ugly, that’s pitiful, so no matter how right my mum is, it’s an active effort to agree with her every day of the week – especially when you’re sitting on the tube waiting for the person across from you to look up and see that there’s a human attached to the shoes they’ve been staring at for 4 minutes.

So yes I know that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the look of my callipers – with some outfits I’ve even realised that they look quite cool, those comments from people weren’t based on pity in the end – and I would never ever ever (!) say that there’s anything wrong with looking like you are disabled, but we say things to ourselves that we wouldn’t dare say to others, so even that isn’t quite so black and white if it’s applied to your view of yourself.

Nonetheless, I’m doing my best to accept that part of myself without conditions, and my best is all I can ever give.

I just don’t feel good enough

I just don’t feel good enough

by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

One of the first things that they tell you when you say you want to be a radio presenter is that when the microphone light turns red, you just need to relax and be entirely yourself. Just be yourself! Except, after three years at university, I wasn’t exactly sure how to do that anymore.

I know that the trope for going to university is that you ‘find’ yourself, come out of your shell, and settle into the person that you’re going to be for most of your 20s. But whenever people have asked me how I found my degree, I tend to come back to them with a conflicted answer: on one hand, I insist that I had some really good times with some fabulous people because that’s true and I hate being negative, but frankly, overall my time at university left me with a tendency to retreat into my insecurities.

I want to say that it happened all of a sudden, but I didn’t wake up one morning and decide that I was going to wear outfits to cover my callipers, start to speak less in social situations, or suddenly feel the need for constant validation from my friends; it was a much more gradual process of feeling like I wasn’t enough for the people and situations I found myself surrounded by.

In some cases, it was specific things that individuals did which made me feel this way – both intentionally and unintentionally – but it was more the general vibe that didn’t suit me. For example, I went to a very normal state school in Bradford, but an aspect of that school that I’d never considered as being integral to how I thought about myself, was that it shared its premises and resources with a special needs school. So every day my fellow students and I walked past, spoke to, and sometimes shared classrooms with severely disabled children and therefore, became accustomed to seeing disability. Consequently, I might’ve had my shoes stared at every day, but subconsciously I didn’t feel unusual because I was never the only disabled kid around. I never thought about the importance of this at the time, but then when I went to a university where I struggled to access disabled parking spaces outside of the colleges or faculties, and where I only remember ever seeing two other visibly disabled students, the impact of that mixed secondary school environment on disabled and able-bodied people alike became startling.

Another area where I didn’t feel like I was enough was in my romantic relationship attempts and sometimes my friendships. To be honest, the theme of my romantic relationships has always been that either I’m not interested when they are or they’re not when I am, they’re in a relationship with someone else already and are just putting loads of tedium or confusion on me, or doing the classically non-committal ‘I like you, but let’s just sleep together’ thing – or we met on holiday and thus continuing anything is pointless. I have been known to shoot myself in the foot by prolonging pointless situations because of boredom or stubbornness as well. So a great combo all around then! But the not thinking I was enough for lads was definitely at its height at university; I knew I didn’t feel good about it, but I hadn’t realised the extent of the toll on my self-esteem until I went to a radio placement 15 minutes up the road in Newcastle and I was surprised to experience someone openly and unapologetically flirting with me. I remember walking away from that situation thinking ‘wow, I’m not actually unattractive then’.

But of all the types of insecurity I’ve felt in the last few years, it was the insecurity in friendships that cut me the deepest.

Honestly, it’s taken me months to come to terms with how beaten down I felt at university and how that had made me into someone who rarely ever felt secure in their relationships with anyone. I’ve always been a person who cares about others very deeply and intensely, I’m reliable and I try my best to be everything those close to me need. But no matter how hard you try, you can’t be everything all at once and it can be difficult to deal with the times when you fall short of that standard you’ve set for yourself. So there were many times over the last few years when I didn’t know what I was doing wrong or why I wasn’t enough for my friends, and this just pushed me further into myself.

Unfortunately, feeling like you’re not good enough is something all of us will experience at more than one point in our lives, no matter how hard we hit the self-care routines, and so the best treatment appears to be recognising when the nasty voice in your head is becoming way louder than it ever was before and doing things to shut it up again. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no guru when it comes to this kind of thing, but I think that I knew that my radgy internal voice had become too loud when I went travelling with one of my best friends and thanked her for being so considerate about my feet. She looked at me, surprised and offended that those words had even come out of my mouth, but it was a clear example of how I’d begun to feel like I had to apologise for everything that I am to try and appease my environment. Something you should never feel the need to do.

Since then, I graduated, so obviously I removed myself from the situation physically but it’s been more about rewiring my brain to trust my instincts, stop overthinking everything going on around me, and actively practise confidence again. And now, with the very normal occasional few blips of insecurity, I’m glad to say that I feel more myself than I have for years. I still have wonderful friends from university, and I wouldn’t want you to think that I never had any great times whilst I was there because that just wouldn’t be true, but I didn’t lose any sleep about my degree ending, put it that way.

You might think that that’s a shame and I suppose that it is, but sometimes life just doesn’t go the way you expect it to. That doesn’t make the change a failure or lack, it just is what it is. There’s plenty of fun still to be had in environments that won’t make me feel quite so self-conscious 80% of the time. And that sounds like a much stronger vibe to me.

You’ve gotta stick to your lane

You’ve gotta stick to your lane

by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

I’m the type of person who, in the appropriate situation, would like to look, be, or say something sexy. I’ll go on a night out, spot a wall which looks kind of cool and ask a friend to take a photograph of me in front of it, thinking ‘omg yes this’ll be a good shot’. But then the second the camera starts flashing, I can hold my face for a few seconds before I’ve got absolutely no idea what to do with myself and I end up pulling a stupid face. Orrrrrr, I’ll think I’ve nailed it until my friend hands me back the phone and my figure just hasn’t given what I’d envisioned…so all of the shots head straight to the recycling bin. But it’s not that I’m being consciously self-critical in these moments, it’s just that I don’t think that I give off ‘sexy’ vibes…

By this, I think what I mean is that I don’t see myself as demonstrating a very specific version of femininity associated with models and actresses. I’m visualising the lasses who can take the fire pictures, with the perfect bodies, in the expensive underwear, with the sultry eye contact from across the bar, and the bad bitch vibe where the men come running the second they walk into the room. And even though this expression of femininity is gorgeous, often it’s been constructed in order to make women sexually desirable to men. However, connotations of patriarchy and misogyny aside (very difficult to sweep them aside, but stick with me here), I do still want to be sexy and desirable every now and then – probably even if it comes with a hint of objectification – because in that context it’s on my own terms, but no matter my intentions I just don’t think that I give off that sultry kind of energy.

Hence I wonder, is my slight discomfort with the word a disability thing? Possibly. I mean, for centuries the (physically) disabled body has never been portrayed as sexually desirable, in fact, people have often been encouraged to think of the idea of disabled people having sex as repulsive (if it’s ever thought to happen at all). So yes, that’s probably playing a part in my inner monologue. But I don’t think that that’s the main thing going on here; I think what’s happening is that part of me is assuming that you can only really be ‘sexy’ if others describe you in that way.

We (particularly women) seem to like to categorise ourselves and our friends: at some point, we’ve all decided – actively or passively – who is the ‘cute’ one, the ‘pretty’ one, the ‘funny’ one, the ‘clever’ one, the ‘sexy’ one, and so on and so forth, as if there’s a correct way to be each one of those characteristics. These categories then cement to each of us what we are (and what we’re not), so when we’re described as a word that’s outside of our lane, we assume that a mistake’s been made i.e., I’ve never been the ‘sexy’ one in any friendship group, so that’s probably why I don’t see myself in that light.

So even though I’ve never ended a blog with a homework task, get ready! Because this week I’d like to ask that you consider whether there’s a word (or words) you’ve told yourself you could never be. Then, if you’ve thought of one, the next time you go to the place or do the thing that allows you the time to be with yourself and have a good old think, I’d like you to consider why you can’t be that thing. Finally, once you’ve (hopefully) come to the conclusion that you’re being silly and should stop putting yourself in a box, stop thinking and go do something fun; that’s enough of the internal monologue for one day. Wouldn’t want to overthink it, now would we? Or did I do that already?…

Graduation, but then what?

Graduation, but then what?

by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

In my head, I think that I’m pretty good at hiding my emotions…but then every time I’m even slightly upset or angry, it usually takes my friends, family, or colleagues about 0.5 seconds to notice. So clearly, I’m slightly deluded. However, whilst it may be true that my overall mood is very easy for others to discern, I am that person who takes on a lot of things and eventually snaps when all of those things have piled up in my head. Then it’s in the moments when I’m close to snapping that my mood goes down, I’m tired, and I’m likely to burst into an ugly cry if anyone hits me with the ‘are you okay?’.

Don’t worry, I’m not about to confess to the internet that I’m in the middle of having an existential crisis…Though I will say that I’ve had a pretty intense last few months which have gifted me both good and bad stress, resulting in a few days when my mood hasn’t been as chirpy as it is normally. And one of these stresses has been something that I know many of my peers are overthinking right now: what the hell are we going to do after graduation?

For me, my graduation from university mostly brings a sense of relief. The last 3 years have been a lot of fun in parts but I’d be lying if I said that I don’t feel ready to leave; I’m tired of being confronted by the same annoying problems brought to me by Durham University, and I ache to leave the education system behind for a second. I mean, I’ve been in it for 17 years! That’s a long time. Granted, I had a year out before university but I did work in 2 schools for 6 months of that…then I taught in 3 of the 4 countries I visited…So no matter how much I know I’ll continue to study something for the rest of my life, I think I’d like to give formal education a rest for now.

It’s scary though. I can see it in my friends’ faces when we actually sit for a minute and talk about what we each want to do after uni: everyone masks the apprehension at being thrust into the adult world with talking about ‘panic masters’, internships, job placements, and the classically vague ‘maybe I’ll go travelling’ statements. The fact is that many of us have absolutely no clue what’s next or where we’ll end up, and it’s stressing a lot of young people out that they’re expected to have their whole life mapped out when just a couple of weeks ago we were sitting our exams.

I’m a lucky one in that I do know what I want to do, and I have made moves towards that, but even I feel like I haven’t had a second to breathe before I have to sort the rest of my life out. Also, there’s a stigma against the graduates who choose a different route from the traditional ones. For example, I know I’m moving to a new city and I know what I want to do there, but a career as a radio presenter doesn’t exactly have a cushty grad scheme for me to apply for, so whenever I tell people my plans, they inevitably sound half-baked, and that makes me self-conscious. Even though, we don’t all have to work in an office straight after university if we don’t want to…

Sometimes everything feels like it moves so quickly that there’s no way you can keep up, then other days it’s easy – occasionally, even a bit boring. I’m definitely not qualified to be giving advice on what to do in these situations given that I’m part of those going through the experience, but what I have said to my friends when we’ve been in the car or in a living room, stressing about the future, is that the best approach to have is to do whatever makes you happiest. That might be another year of university, working abroad and travelling, moving to a new city to start a new job, or having absolutely no clue and needing a couple of months of nothing to figure yourself out. Obviously, money is a factor in this and it’s not always easy to do exactly what you’d ideally want to do, still, try not to put so much pressure on yourself to have everything mapped out right now; take a minute to breathe.

Truly, there is no rush.

A Big Weekend for Accessibility

A Big Weekend for Accessibility

by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Just over a week ago, I went to BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend in Coventry with my friend. I’d won the tickets because a few weeks before the festival, I’d been to the Student Radio Association’s conference where during a talk on how to put on a live event, I’d asked the speakers how they were trying to make festivals like Big Weekend more accessible to disabled people. Originally, I wasn’t going to ask the question at all because frankly, no matter how much I share with the internet, I do still feel incredibly lame every time I bring up disability in front of a crowd. So, sitting there, in a room full of strangers – many of whom, I was trying to impress – my instinct was to avoid the topic for fear of tokenising myself. But then again, as my Mum and Dad say: if I’m going to do this disability representation thing, then there will be times when I have to fight my ego, and just ask the question.

I’d never been to a music festival before. That wasn’t because I’d never wanted to, it was just not something that I thought I’d be able to do, given that the two main taglines for my Spina Bifida are that I can’t stand for long, or walk far. So, I just learnt to compartmentalise the jealousy I felt when I saw friends posting photographs of each other covered in glitter in the middle of a crowd, dancing to the tunes of some of my favourite artists, in the same way that I’ve accepted I’m never going to go ice skating. But, as many disabled people are likely to tell you, I’m excluded from experiences such as these not by my ‘condition’, but by society not really bothering to try and get me involved. However, there are plenty of people who want to change that and it’s not always useful to base the conversation around accessibility on all the things the able-bodied world does wrong.

Obviously, I completely loved Big Weekend: I danced for hours until my legs ached, I pushed my way to the front to see an artist I’m not even that fussed about, I ate greasy food from a burger van, and I got a bit emotional at the beauty of sharing all those experiences with strangers in a field. But, I’m disabled, so it was unsurprising that I also had some not very nice moments during the weekend.

The festival had lots of things put in place to try and make it accessible, and when it came to the company and the people working within it, I have my hand on my heart when I say that I felt like they were sincere in wanting to make everyone feel welcome. However, individual people work these events, and it was the individual’s understanding of disability which created issues for me. For example, on the first day of the weekend, I wore trousers which covered my callipers – something I know makes people totally unaware of my disability. On that day, because I don’t look ‘disabled’, each time I asked to cut through barriers so that I wouldn’t have to walk all the way round or if I could please be directed to the accessibility exit closest to me, I was consistently doubted and questioned – even after saying it was because I’m disabled. Whereas the second day when I wore a dress so my callipers were on full display, I didn’t even need to finish my sentence before barriers were lifted, no questions asked.

This kind of experience wasn’t unique to BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend, though. I get this everywhere I go, whether that be in an airport asking for disability assistance from one terminal to the next, or simply driving into a disabled space outside the shop. I’ve had people tut at me, roll their eyes, knock on my car window to ask me what I think I’m doing; people have told me ‘no’, accused me of ‘stopping people who need this help from getting it’, and I’ve even had my name removed from accessibility lists because someone took one look at me and assumed that it must’ve been a mistake.

So yes, I love love loved BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend and it did make me feel for the first time like I’m also invited to music festivals, and I do trust that the BBC has every intention of improving the accessibility of its events and internal structures. But when I speak about accessibility and disability inclusion, I’m going for more of a paradigm shift: I want everyone to change the way they understand and perceive disability. It’s a hefty task, it’ll take a hot minute, and it’s as much the responsibility of the individual as it is of the institutions, but I’m an optimist, so I think it’s possible.

This is about individuals engaging with their preconceptions of disability and how they react to situations – both passively and actively. How do you see me? How should I look? Why do you think I’m lying? These are the questions we need to ask each other because organisations can put provisions in place, but those provisions are useless if the people with the power to let me access them are going to make me beg.

London: it’s a love-hate relationship

London: it’s a love-hate relationship

by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 4 Comments

Whenever I’ve travelled to a different country or have met people from around the world, in the first moments of us getting to know one another, they hear I’m English and they inevitably ask me if I’m from London. I tend to laugh in response, and then we begin the charade of me saying a city they’ve no idea about, and then I try to help them place me by talking about football teams – most of the time we settle on Manchester. Which, of course, if anyone knows anything about the war of the roses and the subsequent beef between Yorkshire and Lancashire, they’ll know that there’s a whole lot of difference between the two areas. Not least in accent.

I don’t mind at all that people from different countries have never heard of Bradford: why should they care? What cuts a little though, is the amount of times I’ve had to have this exact conversation with people from the south of England. Some of them don’t even know what I’m talking about when I mention Leeds! Leeds is a big city!!! And it’s not just that many people don’t know where cities in the north are, it’s the bitter pill that the only place which seems to be of any significance to them is London.

But why care so much?

Well, I care because of the huge economic differences between the north and south of England, and the consequences this has on the lives of the people in the two areas.

I’d never really had much to do with London and the south growing up, other than seeing the London schools on CBBC getting the random celebrity visitors, or knowing that London was where the Queen lived, and that it was really far away from Bradford – in more ways than just distance. But this isn’t the part where I say I grew up in an impoverished household, where my parents had to work 3 jobs for us to eat , because my ability to see the wealth-gap between the north and south isn’t reliant on my family’s economic situation. My parents know what it is to be on the dole, and they have never had any savings, but I’ve never been poor. That doesn’t mean that I don’t know what it looks like, though.

Poverty isn’t just about the money you have, but a secure financial situation gifts people and communities so much more than you might first think. If a family is wealthy, and thus money isn’t something they have to worry about, then they have so much more time, energy and resources to do other things. For example, they can buy books, or go to a different city or country, or buy a membership to a gym. They have the ability to see value in investing in cultural capital: learning to play an instrument, or reading a book is no longer deemed as a ‘waste’, and so many more things like going to university or moving to a bigger city to do an internship seem attainable. Money gives people time and opportunity, and economic stability allows people the freedom to think further than what they need to survive.

So no wonder when I drove into central London last week, the majority of people I saw looked healthier and wealthier than those I’d seen in Shipley earlier that morning. You could see economic stability in the fact that their skin colour didn’t look tired and yellow; fewer people were overweight; more were nicely dressed, in clothes they’d carefully picked out to suit their bodies; all of the shops were open, and around every corner there was a museum or a gallery or a theatre. You can literally see the differences, if you’re bothered to look.

Unfortunately, the last time I spoke about a north-south class divide, was when I wrote a description of my experience as a northerner at a Russell Group University. I did my best to not be overly critical of people, but still that blog was reported by at least 100 members of my university’s Facebook group, and it helped to get me blocked from the page for over a year. So, it would seem that this desire to ignore and neglect the uncomfortable parts of our society we blamed on older generations, persists into psyche of the ‘progressive’ millennials.

It gets very tiring very quickly to be stereotyped as a stupid northerner, from the middle of nowhere, when you know that those stereotypes are rooted in blatant economic inequality. So no, I don’t find it very funny when I sit on a delayed tube and make a joke saying ‘none of this in Bradford’, and a super healthy, well-dressed, young girl with a southern accent says ‘is there anything in Bradford?’. Because regardless of how she intended it, or whether she’s a nice girl or not, it just doesn’t sound very funny coming from a stranger with that accent.

I’d like to finish this blog with clarifying that the north of England doesn’t need pity or to be patronised, and that obviously I’m aware that the south isn’t full of only privileged people. There’s plenty of culture, history and privilege up here, and there’s plenty of poverty down there. But it would be helpful for everyone if individuals started to take more notice of the disparities and the inevitable effects those disparities have on communities. After all, government and institutions will only start to spread the wealth out more, if people (especially those from the side with more) are seen to actively want that to happen.

Economics and equality are complex topics, and there’s no way I can put the world to rights with one blog entry. Nonetheless, I know that there will be many of you reading this who had never considered why a southerner taking the piss out of a northerner might sting a little more. And maybe my northern peers don’t feel irritated by it in the same way I do, but I felt like I needed to say it – especially in the divisive political climate of the last 10 years. I don’t hate London; in fact, I love it because it’s exciting, and the buildings are beautiful, and everything’s there, but then again, why does everything have to only be there?

See you later!

See you later!

by elizabethmdouglas ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

As I write this, it’s 30th June 2021, and it’s the last day of mine and my housemate’s tenancy for our second year of University. When we first moved in, it came at the end of an intense 5 months for the entire world; we’d been robbed of our third term of first year by the coronavirus pandemic, and we were moving in not really knowing what our second year would look like. Some of us came straight away, but it took until September/October for us to have pretty much a full house. First term was absolutely riddled with lockdowns and being ill with coronavirus, though we still managed to have some hectic nights-out before everything shut and make our university house start to feel like our home. We even cooked a Christmas dinner and got all dressed up to feel some semblance of normality – shout out to Rish’s brief stint as a mixologist. Then second term came and we had to STUDY. There were countless library trips, hours spent staring at laptops, withering attention-spans, and a whole lot of delirious laughter in between some snowball fights and getting lost in the woods as we searched for some alpacas. Obviously, we also had plenty of seshes, but that’s standard Lavender House activity.

Finally, we got our first summer term at university together. The exam period was exhausting, but it came and went pretty quickly overall, and I must say that sitting next to each other as we all attempted completely different exams was surprisingly enjoyable…Though not as enjoyable as when we finished and were able to just relax and spend time with each other.

Completing a year of university during a pandemic has been a real struggle for my friends and I at points. I can’t speak for everyone, but I know that I’ve felt moments of intense physical and emotional exhaustion, boredom, despondency, and isolation. But through all of that, we managed to laugh together every single day.

I was speaking to one of my housemates the other day about it, and we were saying just how strange it is that we come to university and we meet all of these people, and make all of these memories, then we all go off into the world and it’s unlikely that we’ll ever see each other again. Here, I probably sound super dramatic, and you’re probably wondering why I’m getting so sentimental when I haven’t even graduated, but next year is my year abroad so a lot of my friends will graduate before I come back, and also a little sentimentality wouldn’t hurt the English once in a while. After all, as much as we shy away from deep or intense emotion, it is true that we may never know what becomes of these people we’ve come to really care for in the past couple of years.

For me, if it weren’t for my university friends, then I don’t know how much I would’ve kept up with these blogs, or how confident I would’ve felt in making a podcast or being on the radio, and I most definitely would NOT have walked on a stage in front of everyone at our college fashion show. They’ve helped me to stop slut-shaming myself if I get drunk and feel like sleeping my with someone. They’ve let me cry to them about how difficult my degree is more times then they probably could’ve been bothered with, and they’ve forgiven my occasional tendencies towards passive aggression. But most of all, they’ve made me feel safe and loved, and they’ve made me laugh until my stomach hurt.

So whilst I know I will see many of you again, I wanted to take a second to give you some love as we all move out and go on to the next bit – whether that be a final year at university, a year abroad, a placement year, a masters degree, or the start to life as a university graduate. Regardless of how often we see each other again though, I’m going to steal the words of a friend I met and said goodbye to in Ukraine two years ago, and say that in the moments when I miss seeing you all the time, it’ll cheer me up to know that you exist somewhere.

See you later my loves x