In may, I visited my very first escape room. I expected some hiccups, but was nonetheless excited. Escape rooms sounded like the ideal amalgamation of everything I find fun: low-key activities, free of unnecessary stimuli, packed with puzzles and bolstered by a team atmosphere. I’m not naive, and I anticipated visual challenges I’d be unable to meet, but I assumed there would be enough tasks I could manage to make the experience worthwhile. Besides, I was used to settling for a little less. It’s an art form at this point.

The escape room proved less accessible than I could have imagined. We didn’t make it through the entire sequence, so I can’t guarantee there weren’t accessible brain-teasers lurking near the end, but everything we encountered was, at minimum, partially visual. Even the logic puzzles required such complexity of description—and such perfect recall on my part—that I gave up completely. While the fully-sighted participants swarmed the claustrophobic space, ransacking shelves and deciphering tiny writing on the walls, I hung back, at loose ends. Occasionally, some sympathetic soul would try to include me, but the activity was on a tight timeline, and none of us could think of a timely and effective way to let me participate at all, let alone as fully as everyone else. Ultimately, I was of no more use to anyone than the toddlers running around our legs.

I left the room disappointed, berating myself for being so. Shouldn’t I have expected this? Shouldn’t I be used to this by now? Why did I let myself hope, anyway? I ought to know better.

When you grow up rural and disabled, disconnected from opportunities and understanding peers, you’re likely to adopt the art of settling as a survival mechanism, and quickly. If you’re unable to be at peace with missing out, you’re probably in for a war of attrition.

It wasn’t all bad: My family and friends were unfailingly accommodating, and my sister was denied many an activity because my parents worried it would exclude me. Cousins and friends modified games to make them easier for me to play, and valued my participation almost without exception or complaint.

The rest of the world wasn’t so inclusive, and I came to accept, at a very young age, that I’d better get used to the sidelines. After a few years of skipping rope on the stage while my gym class played dodgeball, or solving math equations while my classmates took swimming lessons, I even grew to prefer the fringes. It seemed safer there—more suited to my introverted, self-conscious personality. Inclusion seemed like an unreasonable burden to place on anyone, and when you grow up surrounded by nondisabled people, you tend to prioritize harmony over desire.

By the time I started university and amassed a group of disabled friends, I noticed how demanding—that’s how I viewed them then—they all seemed to be. They wanted described video and tactile museum exhibits and blind-friendly versions of mainstream sports. Their determination to participate felt foreign and frightening. I’d spent years convincing myself I was happy to spectate. A deeply-embedded combination of habit and self-protection had let me hover on the sidelines without acknowledging my own desire for a life more fully lived. All this time, I had thought myself the kind of person who hangs back, sits things out, and says no to anything that seems too fun or messy or adventuresome. With the exception of my musical performances, I’d rarely permitted myself to reach beyond my limits and ask for more. On the cusp of adulthood, I was forced to accept that I had contorted myself into the settling kind to avoid rejection and exclusion. It’s easier to say “I don’t want to be included,” than to say “I wanted, and did not get.”

Growing pains set in, and some of them persist today. I still catch myself being a “no” girl. Settling for less than everyone else comes far too naturally, even now, and I continue to demand higher things for others while quieting my own dangerous longings. Loved and encouraged as I am by my family and friends, I still instinctively reassure myself that I don’t need inclusion. I don’t need to be welcomed. I don’t need to transcend my most basic needs. If I can pay my bills and hold certain types of jobs, what right have I to anything more frivolous?

Growing pains are not eternal, and look how much growing I’ve done! I’m now more focused on inclusion than access. I’m more inclined to ask for a pleasant experience, rather than contenting myself with a bearable one. If my reaction to the escape room is any indication, I’m becoming downright spoiled, expecting to enjoy social gatherings and play an active role in activities I’ve paid for. I’ve practically become a princess!

I’ve come a long way, but I won’t diminish what it took to get me here. Dismantling my tendency to settle has been a painful and unpredictable process, with many discouraging moments when I’ve judged myself or others for wanting what nondisabled people are given by default. Occupying my place at the table has been, and remains, an ongoing work-in-progress.

Are you a settler? Have you learned to think of inclusion in terms of what you deserve, while believing it’s a right for everyone else? Is fun something you force yourself to earn? Do you pretend you like the margins because the centre might reject you?

Don’t settle to survive. Do not place yourself in a supporting role because main characters have bodies and brains that pass as “normal.” Break the pattern of treating less like it’s more. Be grateful, and be patient, but be a little demanding, too. Realize that a more vibrant life is possible, and allow yourself to want it, because no one else can make it happen for you.

Most nondisabled people don’t tie themselves in knots, wondering whether they deserve to enjoy their lives. So, my fellow disabled people, why should we?