I Lied

I lied.

I liked to Joe.

And to Marissa, and to Ruby and to Sadie, I out and out lied.

But, of great concern to me, I lied to myself. It was an easy lie to tell. It was a lie the obscured a truth that I didn't want to acknowledge and I didn't want to confront. Those are the easiest lies to tell.

We were all talking about going to see 'The Illusionists' who were here in town, with their 'Direct from Broadway' show playing at one of the big theatre houses down in the district. The only time that everyone could make it was yesterday, Thursday. It was a work day for me so I said, "I'll organize the tickets but I won't be able to go because I have to work." It was an easy lie to believe because every word was true, or nearly true.

I got on the computer, found seats and purchased 4 of them. I was astonished at how simple the process was. I pushed a few buttons, filled in credit card information and wham, we had seats and seconds later the tickets themselves. I haven't bought seats on line for many years because accessible seats are apparently so difficult to arrange that you've got to talk to a person who talks to a person who talks to a person and an hour or two later you have seats. It was so efficient! Do non-disabled people even realize that their privilege seeps into everything, including buying tickets for a show?

There was also a sense of relief on Thursday morning when I started work knowing that they'd go down and get their seats and that would be that. I'd have been tied up in knots from anxiety because well more than half of my experiences in the big theatre houses in this city and in New York, as it happens, there has been a whole heap of bother when I got to the theatre about my seat. I've been moved to seats I didn't want because they didn't take out the seats for the chair, I've been made to sit across the theatre from those I've gone with, I've been humiliated by an usher yelling at me about going to the bathroom before the show. When it's good it grand when it's awful it's shit. Thursday morning no worries.

But then.

As I did the work that I was doing. It all started to unravel. I have vacation time left, none of the work I was doing was urgent even while it was important. I could have gone.

I could have.

But, I simply didn't want to go to the theatre while being disabled. I just didn't want to face it. I didn't want to spend hours on the phone finding tickets and then hours worrying about what's going to go wrong this time. I just didn't want to.

So, I lied to myself.

I made it easy for me to ignore the world I live in, the role that inaccessibility and sort of accommodations play in my life, the work and the worry that comes from being disabled as opposed to having a disability.

I can't do this.

I can't get into this habit.

I can't simply submit.

I can't let truth hide behind lies.

I can't.

And, I hope, I won't do it again although I suspect, I might.