Joanne Wacha: Feeling Left Out

Transcript

I did get into feeling sorry for myself at one point ‘cause I remembered I was with these girls who were really lovely to me, I really feel ashamed saying it now and I was just like, ‘No, go away, you’re only helping me out because I’m a wheelchair, you don’t really want to be with me and go on the rides with me, see you can’t even go on that ride ‘cause you’re with me, just leave me alone.’ I really just felt very sorry for myself and I actually had to sit with the teachers, just with the teachers while all my other friends just went on different rides and there were no rides that I could go on, I think I went on one.

But it was a tough trip because there was still stuff I couldn’t do and I felt very left out and like the guys would go out at night, I don’t know where they were going, probably going to get some drink or something, but they would always escape at night and that’s not something I could do, the learning assistant was right next door.

We went to the theatre a lot which was great, I really enjoyed the theatre and they were always accessible. But I’d always have to go on my own ‘cause I couldn’t go on public transport like everybody else did so I always had to have a taxi on my own and go there and go back. That I felt very excluded then. And there were a couple of trips actually, to the blind college that I couldn’t go on because it wasn’t accessible, you know, just feeling excluded a lot and that’s a theme amongst my education that I felt a lot, a lot of exclusion. Which I still feel sometimes happens in society today. But yeah hopefully there’ll be more of an improvement, and I think it’s going to happen, definitely actually.

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