As good a journey as I can hope for

[cosmolinguist]

I feel like I've absorbed so much toxic positivity around my disability that it's very easy to say about today "Thanks for your kind words everyone, but it all went fine and I didn't have anything to worry about!"

It did all go fine, especially because my friend was able to pick me up from the train station which removed the most stressful part of the journey I'd prepared myself for, which was getting to a new place on my own. My kryptonite, I called that earlier today, and it really is.

Before I could know that my friend could rescue me from this (they were waiting for something that was going to happen "between 9:30 and 2:30," could pick me up if it happened before I got there and couldn't if it didn't), I really was struggling.

Occasionally my nystagmus can be so bad it leads to feelings of derealization.

Or maybe it's just that the nystagmus is worsened by stress and derealization also happens when I'm really stressed. Maybe they just share a common ancestor. Regardless, it's really inconvenient and uncomfortable to deal with this.

I said so on social media as I was getting the bus into town, having left the house just too late to get a train that would've been quicker.

And by the time I

• got a tram across town from where the bus dropped me off
• bought a ticket (thank goodness I could do this from a person! I had no idea if the ticket office would be staffed at that station and I physically cannot buy the ticket I needed from a machine even if I'd been able to use the machines (apparently 3% of blind and partially sighted people can use those touchscreen ticket machines without difficulty and I'm in the 97%!)
• just missed a train
• thought I had to wait 40 minutes for the next one
• went for a pee (yet again bemoaning the lack of hooks or shelves or anywhere to put anything in accessible toilets)
• came back to find two staff near the display boards which also had a big sticker on the floor saying "Passenger Assist meeting point" and a little kiosk saying "information point" which was now staffed, but by someone busy chatting to his station but the other staff member so neither of them paid any attention to the guy with a noticeable limp and a white cane peering very hesitantly at the display boards above them
• found another train 15 minutes sooner than I expected which gave my slow self just enough time to get there
• determined the platform
• found the lifts to get there (I'd only ever used the stairs at this station but there are a lot of them so with my ankle as it is today I wanted the lifts)
• worried I was on the wrong platform because I didn't think the next train expected there could be out of the way in time
• heard an announcement minutes before my train saying it was now coming in on a different platform)
• got to the right platform (luckily no more lifts were needed)
• got on the train
• found a seat as far as I could get from others (which meant being near the toilet and I guess that was smelly because the one person sitting near me made a point of getting up and closing the door when someone leaving left it open, but I didn't notice anything -- yet another reason to wear a mask!) and
• read the number of very kind replies on my phone

...I was able to feel much more grounded.

So yeah, it went fine. All that stuff happened though. And that's part of what I'd call an incredibly smooth journey. Maybe it's okay that I get anxious and exhausted when traveling or sometimes just considering traveling? It's not as if I'm incorrect in the assessment of the situation that leads me to such anxiety.

I don't want to minimize that just because it all went smoothly.

Anyway I had a great day with my friend and the kids: two of whom have grown so much since I saw them, the littlest of whom didn't even exist the last time I saw her family and she's already a year old! It was great.

Comments

[otter]

Reading through that list, I can almost imagine how exhausting it is.

I'm glad you had a great day after all that.

[amphetamine]

The stat on the accessibility of the tickets machines is so awful, ugh. I'm glad you had a good time despite the commute!

[lilysea]

Yes, when I read you talking about travel Anxiety in your previous post I was thinking

"This doesn't sound like disproportionate Anxiety though, this sounds like an accurate assessment of just how annoying and exhausting it is to travel from A to B while Disabled"

because it reminded me of how annoying & exhausting it is for me to travel from A to B as a wheelchair user

[cosmolinguist]

Yeah, as with covid, I don't want to chalk up to "clinical anxiety" what is in fact "a clear understanding of things"!

[silveradept]

Oh, good! Glad that the trip itself worked out.