i just recently bought my first wheelchair. i was so excited about it since i have a series of genetic conditions that just make moving around risky and painful, though im capable of walking a bit, i've been excited for this because i knew it's gonna make my life so much easier.
i'm broke as fuck, though, and don't have the means to get a custom fitted chair, so i bought a pretty good standard chair. I went out to the shops in it today and well. i feel a bit defeated. it was a struggle, my town is small, the pavements are narrow and tilted and up or down hills, a small trek to the store left me exhausted since this is my first time being Active in a chair. everyone in my family is going "see?? i told you so" at me over this, and now i just feel worse about using my chair, despite it being useful and making me so happy initially. i feel like ive made a mistake, and now everyone's punishing me, and maybe if id just held off, saved up and bought a better chair and just toughed it out and kept walkign with crutches things would be fine. it just makes me feel like a worse disabled person compared to most of the wheelchair user community who all have their custom built active chairs, you never see people in standard chairs, it makes me feel like i'm doing something wrong or like i'm disabled wrong.
i guess i just wanted to get this off my chest. sorry for yapping.
It’s fine to yap anon! I’m sorry you feel that way, I can assure you, you do not need a custom built active chair, there’s tons of wheelchair users who don’t have one and that is 100% okay. You are not doing anything wrong and there’s absolutely no way that you are being “disabled wrong”. I know many places are unfortunately not built for wheelchair users or disabled people in general. It’s unfortunate and sad but it’s due to disabilities not being as recognized and stuff until more recently. It sucks but there’s not too much we can do about it unfortunately. You might be able to petition your town to make the sidewalks a bit wider so they can be more wheelchair accessible but that’s all I can think of. Ignore your family, if you need something, you need something, you can always try saving money for a custom built active chair in the future, a non custom built wheelchair should be fine for now. Your family can leave you alone about it, you are doing the best you can for yourself right now and sometimes you just have to get something that may be considered ‘less helpful’ than other things in others eyes. Non custom built wheelchairs are just as helpful as custom built ones, they serve a purpose and do it decently. I wouldn’t worry about what your family says.
