I am someone who belongs in front of a stage.
Music is my life. It is my joy and my happiness. It represents freedom and hedonism. It has the power to make me feel and to make me remember.
I once heard about an idea: picking a piece of music for every important moment and memory in your life. Then years later, long after the memory starts to feel faint, when you question whether it was really in this lifetime, you put the song on and get transported back in time.
This is why my dad has a 58-hour playlist on Spotify, each song transcending time and space. I like to shuffle it and we land somewhere in the tapestry of his life. His source of joy, nostalgia, or melancholy is in his pocket at all times. His life wrapped up in something tangible. I am absolutely my father’s daughter, but I digress.
My love affair with live music began aged 14. Watching bands after school, Popworld on the weekend. I attended my first festival in sixth form, Ashleyhay, and my world was changed forever.
I drank vodka straight from the bottle, experienced my first kiss, and began to understand the power of hedonism. What it felt like to completely let go, even if only for a weekend. Because when I walked through those gates and roamed across the fields, I was free. Nothing in my brain but the slight buzz of music that seemed to ring long after the last band had stopped.
I did not worry about who I am or who I will become. No tasks or to-do lists. No overwhelming sense of anything. For someone who spends an eternity in her mind, it was sweet relief. I felt free to lose my sense of self and immerse myself in music and dancing.
This freedom existed because I did not have to think about my body. Because I did not have to think at all.
My first experience of an official festival was Glastonbury. Aged 17, I somehow persuaded my parents to take us to spend a weekend in front of the most iconic stage on earth instead of going to Greece. My little sister was 13, and I don’t know if they realised that weekend would set us up for 15 years of shared experiences at shows.
I have my sister, and I have never needed to worry about who I’d attend an event with since. My ride or die until the last DJ stops.
One of the hardest things after my accident was not about me. Quite frankly, when it comes to what happened, I got all the glory. The support. The validation. The praise for keeping going.
But when I got flipped upside down that day, my disability didn’t just take a version of me from myself. She was ripped from those who knew her, too. The people closest to me, I suspect, lost a version of someone they loved that day as well. Because when my experience changes forever, it is inevitable that theirs will too.
And while we might still ride or die until the last DJ stops, it’s different now.
This New Year’s Eve, we went to Lost Paradise. It was my first time back at a proper festival since we left home. I have done many festivals in my wheelchair, and logically and logistically, Lost Paradise should have been no different. But instead, it was a weekend where I came face to face with who I could no longer be.
And while nothing will take the shine off a weekend with the people I love most, I felt a longing I’ve not known since everything first happened.
For the first time in seven years, I gave myself permission to go back. To sit with what was and feel the desperation in my body of wishing things were different. Wishing that I could have my favourite thing back. Do it the old way, on two feet, feeling free. Without everything being effort and hard work.
There are no solo trips to the bathroom or the bar. No meeting back here. The idea of “I’m going to stay out, I’ll see you tomorrow” is entirely impossible now. Instead, I lie in my tent and hear the party carrying on without me, because I can’t get home on my own.
I spent most of my life as a solo ranger at the end of the night. When the whole group had gone to bed, I spent sunrise with strangers instead. Navigating the fields would be one thing, but trying to make friends is another. I am the disabled girl, out in a wheelchair, on her own. My internalised ableism is screaming, crying, and dying inside.
With every speech, story, or podcast, I speak in defiance of my disability. Loud and proud. I share my story, but it’s never that deep. How can you wrap something as complex and nuanced as losing the ability to walk into a one-hour show or a seven-minute speech?
It’s hard to say words when you don’t really know which ones you would use. But I’m learning that not everything needs intellectualising. And yet, here we are.
What I experienced that weekend was a feeling. I felt it deep in my body and my bones. A long ache for what was. For the freedom that comes only from forgetting everything in a field. To kick my Doc Martens through the dust once more. To two-step late into the night, no, the next morning.
A piece of me longed for just a moment in time where I could go back to her.
But my body is restrictive. My movements are restricted.
I am stuck in a sea of thousands, just a wooden pillar and my people to protect me. My roots reach down into the grass. My wheels will not move. I will not move. We are here for three hours, in this one place, this one space.
Navigating strangers. Some who want to talk. Some who simply can’t see you are there. Others who choose to step over you because it’s the easiest way through a crowd.
I ache. Dancing for hours on end, sitting down, takes its toll. But worse still, I can sense I am minutes away from spasms. The telltale sign I need the bathroom. Chris Stussy has half an hour left. I do not want to leave. I’ve been waiting all weekend for him.
The pain is present. The spasms come thick and fast. I am so uncomfortable I can’t even think. It’s all-consuming. If we leave, if we can leave, we won’t be coming back. I don’t want to leave, so I dance. I try to get lost in the music and ignore what my body needs, just for another thirty minutes.
Music is my life, and festivals are still my favourite thing. But when my wheelchair graces the grass, alongside the constant buzz of the music is the chatter in my mind. Because I am not anonymous anymore. I cannot just disappear into the crowd and forget myself.
Yes, the freedom is still there to be taken, but it feels forever just slightly out of my grasp. For the others in the field, but not for me, and maybe not for those who spend their weekend with me. Feeling protected at all costs comes at a price.
It’s hard to go back. To spend time somewhere that meant everything. A space that was your eternal source of joy, where the noise became non-existent and we didn’t have to be anyone at all.
Then suddenly, for one reason or another, it is no longer ours to hide in. When we go there, it feels different. We feel seen, and it feels raw.
There’s no world in which that wouldn’t hurt. It comes coloured with emotion and nuance that can’t be made sense of, something that’s just felt. But we still show up. We still carry on and keep going. Our love still lies there.
But being seen comes with us now.
