Disabled During Election Season
The British general election is just two weeks away and for disabled people like me, it’s a scary time.
Sometimes the need to share how this election has made me feel is overpowering.
When I meet my friends or fellow classmates, the words melt on my tongue. I’m not visibly disabled, most of them don’t know there’s anything ‘wrong’ with me. They mightn’t understand. I have a feeling though, that you all will.
I stand on the bus, eyeing the disabled seats and wishing I had the courage to ask someone if I can sit down. On the way home, I pass a house with windows covered in witty slogans and posters for the political party I support.
There’s a couple sitting at their dining room table, preparing for their evening meal. From outside, in the rain, their life looks magical.
They still have hope. Pinned on their kitchen wall is a wall hanging with an uplifting message of change.
Even if the idea that the future can be better for people like me has begun to feel fanciful, I want to sink into the imagined world manufactured inside that house I walk by every day.
But I can’t, because I live in the Real World and here life isn’t fair.
I’ll walk past that house, into a lecture theatre. Sitting beside me will be perhaps ninety other postgrad students, all of us only semi-focused on the class. Or, if it’s a Friday, I’ll head to my uni’s bar with some friends. Sometimes the noise there is complete sensory overload, but I can deal.
I can pretend that the noise isn’t there, use up some extra spoons to make it through the night. Conversations are a little harder to avoid and whenever politics has come up lately I’ve felt so uncomfortable. I can’t say how I truly feel.
I’ll rewind a little. The party currently in power in my country has been in charge while some pretty awful things have happened, including treatment of disabled people so bad that even a UN committee has had it’s say on how bad things have become.
This party is set to win the upcoming election by a comfortable majority.
I feel invisible and when I see acquaintances at university who I know vote for that party, and the election is discussed, the question I desperately want to ask is:
Do you care about the vulnerable? Do you care about the disabled people all around you whose lives have been made a misery by this government? When you cast your vote, will you think about all of the heartache that comes next?
I can’t ask that, of course. If I could and someone answered that they were aware of all of those things but x policy was far more personally significant to them, I could understand that on an intellectual level. It would still be upsetting, but it would make sense.
Harder to understand would be the person who answers that they hadn’t thought of that, or it isn’t on their radar, or ‘they’re not disabled, so why should they care?’.
So I stay silent, all of my thoughts bubbling away beneath the surface.
I know that everyone is entitled to vote how they see fit, of course, that’s the benefit of democracy. It is still difficult to watch as you move towards the day when you’ll see just how little the population as a whole think about the rights of the needy.
Over the last few years, I have had to come to terms with the rights and wellbeing of people like me meaning less than jingoistic phrases like ‘Brexit means Brexit’. I’ve had to watch as the effects of the current ruling party’s harsh policies affect myself and my loved ones.
And I’ve said nothing, because it feels like no-one out there understands.
Being disabled in modern Britain can feel like you’re in a lifeboat without oars, drifting out to sea. Any calls for help are ignored or ridiculed. You’re not really disabled, or you’ve already had enough help, or you can’t really expect someone to make a change just for you.
So you keep swimming, hoping for the day when the oar that you should have had all along will arrive.
Most of the time the tiny insults of inaccessibility or misunderstanding are an inconvenience. A daily hurt, like a dozen tiny paper cuts, that soon fades away.
During election season everything is heightened, because there is the possibility for change. The possibility for a more caring society, for a kinder government, and for there to be a tangible sign that we really do live in a country where more unites us than divides us.
There is the possibility that December 12th will be that day and the collective might of the British voting public will wash away the dangers of populism and rabid nationalism.
I know that on that cold Thursday evening I won’t be the only disabled person leaning forward in their armchair, eyes fixed at the television screen, praying silently to a deity they may not even believe to.
Please, please, please: give us the boost we need.
And when the exit poll is released and thousands of disabled people across the country cry as one, whether they are tears of joy or sadness, please know you’re not alone.
I’m here and I see you.
A brief note to readers — Thank you for reading, I appreciate you all and wish you the best this holiday season!
If you disagree with my assessment of the British government, I respectfully ask that you please do not comment here to tell me. Being disbelieved about my own personal experiences is extremely triggering to me, due to past experiences that relate directly to the themes discussed in this article. I still want to share my views on this important issue, but in a way that is healthy and safe for me.
