{"id":592376,"date":"2026-08-13T20:58:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T20:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/592376\/"},"modified":"2026-08-13T20:58:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T20:58:09","slug":"ireland-feels-like-its-daring-me-to-complete-an-obstacle-course-when-i-leave-the-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/592376\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Ireland feels like it\u2019s daring me to complete an obstacle course when I leave the house’"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I was 18, I was in a car accident. My boyfriend was killed. I was paralysed from my chest down. It\u2019s 37 years ago now. I\u2019ve a lot of chronic pain and, at this stage, a lot of deterioration.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve had many life-changing moments \u2014 obviously impactful moments like the day of the accident, or my daughter\u2019s birth. But also quieter, seemingly innocuous moments that say something about how a single day can shift your understanding of yourself, and the world around you.<\/p>\n

Like the day in a seaside town in Co Dublin in 2021. I went into a shoe shop, not something I generally do, but I looked in the window, wondering \u2018Would that fit me?\u2019 I\u2019ve a wide foot. And the woman in the shop asked if I wanted to come in. I said: “No, I\u2019m grand”. She said: “We have a ramp.”<\/p>\n

I felt obligated to go in. She\u2019d gone to the bother of getting the ramp. I\u2019m sure she didn\u2019t care whether I came in or not; she was just being nice. So it was just out of politeness, like \u2018it\u2019d be rude not to\u2019, that I went in.<\/p>\n

\"TracyTracy Martin, debut author, in a wheelchair for the past 37 years at her home in Co Monaghan. Picture: Philip Fitzpatrick<\/p>\n

The ramp was short, like a delivery ramp. I knew in my head, heart and soul, that I shouldn\u2019t, that this ramp was going to be a nightmare. I went against my instinct. The whole time in the shop I was thinking: ‘How am I going to get out?’ I couldn\u2019t go out front-ways. I\u2019d tip out, go head-first. I\u2019d have to reverse down and I\u2019d have to rely on someone to hold the back.<\/p>\n

With a disability, I\u2019m always thinking about the next hurdle \u2014 a lot of the time the environment isn\u2019t friendly, like you go to use a disabled toilet and it\u2019s full of cleaning equipment because it\u2019s being used as a store.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The lady said she\u2019d hold the back of the chair while I was going down the ramp. Going down a slope in a wheelchair, I couldn\u2019t see behind; the ramp was steep and straight out onto the footpath. I was saying: “Am I ok there? Am I lined up?” You’re trusting people to say: “You\u2019re grand, go on ahead”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was really steep, really short \u2013 I went down it very fast. She let go as the ramp met the footpath; my chair flipped backwards \u2014 it\u2019s top-heavy, so I flipped back, landed on my head.<\/p>\n

The pavement crowded, everybody stopped. She was mortified. I\u2019d put my care in her hands and, through no fault of hers, I\u2019d flipped and fallen. As I lay there, going through my head was: why did I put myself in this precarious position?<\/p>\n

And people were asking: “Are you alright? What can we do for you?” I was in shock, saying: “I\u2019m grand, not a bother on me”. Brushing it off.<\/p>\n

The hurt was physical, but also emotional… embarrassment, feeling really self-conscious, but especially beating myself up that I\u2019d gone against my better judgement, thinking: \u2018What an awful stupid thing to do\u2019. Like any of us when we\u2019ve an inner knowing not to do something, but we do it anyway and it doesn\u2019t work out \u2014 it makes it more impactful.<\/p>\n

I realised how much we can go along with things to make others comfortable, to please them. How much we shrink ourselves in that. Madonna was really big when I was 18. I was into all of it \u2014 the perms, long black gloves, bow in the hair, really out there. I was the person who\u2019d walk into a room and people would go \u2018Who\u2019s your woman!\u2019 I liked to stand out, not merge.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"TracyTracy Martin: ‘Ireland still feels like it\u2019s daring me to complete an obstacle course every time I leave the house.’<\/p>\n

Then with the accident, the disability, the wheelchair, there are other reasons to stand out. It changed how I moved through, and viewed, the world\u2026 With disability you\u2019re fighting stuff the whole time. Sometimes your own stuff \u2014 sometimes society, how it\u2019s set up to make you feel lesser.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The thing about ageing with disability is that everyone assumes you\u2019ve figured it out by now, as if experience automatically translates into ease. It doesn\u2019t.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ireland still feels like it\u2019s daring me to complete an obstacle course every time I leave the house. I\u2019m not just talking about dramatic, cinematic obstacles. I mean the small, stupid ones like the lip on a doorway that\u2019s half an inch too high, the ramp that\u2019s technically a ramp but might as well be a ski slope.<\/p>\n

People think accessibility is about big things \u2014 lifts, ramps, wide doors. It\u2019s also about the tiny, daily frictions that wear you down. The ones that remind you, quietly, consistently, that the world wasn\u2019t built with you in mind.<\/p>\n

The girl before the accident, the girl after and the girl stuck in between. There are parts that almost get brushed aside in order to adapt. There\u2019s a feeling of \u2018what would I be doing shopping for high heels anyway?\u2019 then the part that says \u2018sure, why wouldn\u2019t I?\u2019 There\u2019s still that spark.<\/p>\n

What I\u2019d change about that day in 2021? Rather than automatically going into \u2018why wasn\u2019t I more careful?\u2019 I\u2019d like to have focused on \u2018you did what you did, let\u2019s find a way out\u2019. I\u2019d quieten that voice that beats myself up.<\/p>\n

While not a memoir, Tracy Martin\u2019s book, So Not Me, is written from the heart of her own life experiences. Fiction rooted in the emotional truth of that split-second moment that changes a life forever. Visit buythebook.ie<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When I was 18, I was in a car accident. My boyfriend was killed. I was paralysed from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":592377,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61997,61,60,43],"class_list":["post-592376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-what-a-difference-a-day-makes","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=592376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592376\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/592377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=592376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=592376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=592376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}