'Ireland feels like it’s daring me to complete an obstacle course when I leave the house'

Monaghan-based author Tracy Martin tells Helen O’Callaghan about a day when she tipped backwards in her manual wheelchair coming out over a makeshift ramp, and how the emotional impact was what stayed with her

Tracy Martin, debut author, in a wheelchair for the past 37 years at her home - 1 Glenn Droiminn, Carrickmacross, Co Monaghan; Picture: Philip Fitzpatrick

When I was 18, I was in a car accident. My boyfriend was killed. I was paralysed from my chest down. It’s 37 years ago now. I’ve a lot of chronic pain and, at this stage, a lot of deterioration.

I’ve had many life-changing moments — obviously impactful moments like the day of the accident, or my daughter’s birth. But also quieter, seemingly innocuous moments that say something about how a single day can shift your understanding of yourself, and the world around you.

Like the day in a seaside town in Co Dublin in 2021. I went into a shoe shop, not something I generally do, but I looked in the window, wondering ‘Would that fit me?’ I’ve a wide foot. And the woman in the shop asked if I wanted to come in. I said: "No, I’m grand". She said: "We have a ramp."

I felt obligated to go in. She’d gone to the bother of getting the ramp. I’m sure she didn’t care whether I came in or not; she was just being nice. So it was just out of politeness, like ‘it’d be rude not to’, that I went in.

Tracy Martin, debut author, in a wheelchair for the past 37 years at her home in Co Monaghan. Picture: Philip Fitzpatrick

The ramp was short, like a delivery ramp. I knew in my head, heart and soul, that I shouldn’t, that this ramp was going to be a nightmare. I went against my instinct. The whole time in the shop I was thinking: 'How am I going to get out?' I couldn’t go out front-ways. I’d tip out, go head-first. I’d have to reverse down and I’d have to rely on someone to hold the back.

With a disability, I’m always thinking about the next hurdle — a lot of the time the environment isn’t friendly, like you go to use a disabled toilet and it’s full of cleaning equipment because it’s being used as a store. 

The lady said she’d hold the back of the chair while I was going down the ramp. Going down a slope in a wheelchair, I couldn’t see behind; the ramp was steep and straight out onto the footpath. I was saying: "Am I ok there? Am I lined up?" You're trusting people to say: "You’re grand, go on ahead". 

It was really steep, really short – I went down it very fast. She let go as the ramp met the footpath; my chair flipped backwards — it’s top-heavy, so I flipped back, landed on my head.

The pavement crowded, everybody stopped. She was mortified. I’d put my care in her hands and, through no fault of hers, I’d flipped and fallen. As I lay there, going through my head was: why did I put myself in this precarious position?

And people were asking: "Are you alright? What can we do for you?" I was in shock, saying: "I’m grand, not a bother on me". Brushing it off.

The hurt was physical, but also emotional... embarrassment, feeling really self-conscious, but especially beating myself up that I’d gone against my better judgement, thinking: ‘What an awful stupid thing to do’. Like any of us when we’ve an inner knowing not to do something, but we do it anyway and it doesn’t work out — it makes it more impactful.

I realised how much we can go along with things to make others comfortable, to please them. How much we shrink ourselves in that. Madonna was really big when I was 18. I was into all of it — the perms, long black gloves, bow in the hair, really out there. I was the person who’d walk into a room and people would go ‘Who’s your woman!’ I liked to stand out, not merge. 

Tracy Martin: 'Ireland still feels like it’s daring me to complete an obstacle course every time I leave the house.'

Then with the accident, the disability, the wheelchair, there are other reasons to stand out. It changed how I moved through, and viewed, the world… With disability you’re fighting stuff the whole time. Sometimes your own stuff — sometimes society, how it’s set up to make you feel lesser. 

The thing about ageing with disability is that everyone assumes you’ve figured it out by now, as if experience automatically translates into ease. It doesn’t. 

Ireland still feels like it’s daring me to complete an obstacle course every time I leave the house. I’m not just talking about dramatic, cinematic obstacles. I mean the small, stupid ones like the lip on a doorway that’s half an inch too high, the ramp that’s technically a ramp but might as well be a ski slope.

People think accessibility is about big things — lifts, ramps, wide doors. It’s also about the tiny, daily frictions that wear you down. The ones that remind you, quietly, consistently, that the world wasn’t built with you in mind.

The girl before the accident, the girl after and the girl stuck in between. There are parts that almost get brushed aside in order to adapt. There’s a feeling of ‘what would I be doing shopping for high heels anyway?’ then the part that says ‘sure, why wouldn’t I?’ There’s still that spark.

What I’d change about that day in 2021? Rather than automatically going into ‘why wasn’t I more careful?’ I’d like to have focused on ‘you did what you did, let’s find a way out’. I’d quieten that voice that beats myself up.

• While not a memoir, Tracy Martin’s book, So Not Me, is written from the heart of her own life experiences. Fiction rooted in the emotional truth of that split-second moment that changes a life forever. Visit buythebook.ie.