We arrived at a hotel, after two calls to confirm our accessible room, to be given a room that was not accessible. You can picture all that ensues, I just can’t write that story again. We eventually find another hotel, load the car and drive over. We’d arrived late at the first hotel, after a full days work and a six hour drive, now it was 2 hours later and we were checking in to a different hotel that happened to have an accessible room.
That weekend some time I had to write the obligatory letter of complaint, sent to the company as well as the actual hotel where this happened. I tried to explain both the situation and what the situation had meant to me. I received an apology letter that I felt, as I said in my reply, was generic and that, while recognizing the situation, didn’t seem to recognize the effect on me as a disabled traveler.
This all ends in a phone call between myself and the manager. We spoke and she said something that really angers me in these situations and I’d like to hear your opinions on this. She said, “I understand how you feel.” I stated clearly that she could not and did not. In fact I ranted. I’d had enough of this kind of bullshit approach to empathy. “I’m tired,” I said “of non-disabled people telling me that they understand how I feel when they simply can’t, they don’t know what it is to be offered a room that you can’t poo in, they don’t know what it’s like to be suddenly, unexpectedly homeless, they don’t know what it is to be on display in a lobby as others check in looking at you with pity and slight superiority because they can sleep in any fucking room in the hotel and you can only use the three or four that were granted you for us, they don’t know what it is to have used up all your energy just getting there and not knowing where to pull more from to try and find another place, drive to another place, hope that the other place got accessibility right, they don’t know that trust from a disabled traveler is different and deeper than it is for a non-disabled traveler, they don’t know that our trust given is absolute and when it’s broken it hurts, they don’t know that disabled travelers move about the world in fear of arrival, in fear that their bodies will make them suddenly, like I was, homeless. You don’t understand.”
“I understand how you feel.”
I do not understand what it feels like to be a person of colour being pulled over by the police.
I do not understand what it is to be a woman walking alone at night.
I do not.
I can only understand my responsibilities in the face of a world that devalues others and my responsibility to change what is in my sphere of influence, starting with my own attitudes and my own actions.
We hung up from the call each angry at the other. She had to control hers, it was her job to stay cool, and she did. I didn’t have to control mine, except to not personally attack her and to stay focused on what happened and why it was important. But the “I understand…” statement pushed a button in me that unleashed a torrent that I couldn’t stop or control.
Can the non-disabled ‘understand’ what it is to be disabled and not have access available? I’m curious, what do you think?
