Blind

What does the word blind mean to you?

What do you think of when you hear or read the word blind?

What do you feel whenever you see a person with visual aids to tell you this person is blind? Such as a Guide dog or a white cane? Or even big dark sunglasses?

The Oxford dictionary describes the meaning of the word blind as Destitute of the sense of sight, whether by natural defect or deprivation.

Because, the important part of that statement above is the visual aids. Not all people who have poorly peepers have anything you could denote that they have any condition or injury at all that makes them visually impaired. myself included, for now.

So many people like myself pass for a sighted person because you cannot see the sheer concentration it takes just so I’m not falling, tripping, bumping into anyone or buying the wrong item on a daily basis.

Reading things for me now isn’t good but it depends.

Depends on the font, colour, background, size of the font, material it’s written on, lightness, darkness, sometimes I can. Most times I can’t. It’s just less stressful for someone else to read stuff for me sometimes.

It is frustrating just being able to  read the word Starters, Main Menu when pit for a meal (if I’m lucky) thinking, but what the fricken hell do they have here?

For example. I went with my friends to Bridlington. I wrote about this trip on an earlier post.

Usually my chap who is severely sight impaired and uses a white cane, reads menus to me. Yep. That’s confusing isn’t it? We’ve had some funny looks because people don’t understand. See me walking in, see Richard walking in, sit down have to read and look closely (central vision) at something and suddenly just like that, I’m the blind one. He sits there and reads bits off the menu to me and whilst I’m better at looking at the menu at home beforehand than I was so I pick what I want before I get there, sometimes it’s not practical when you’re just bobbing about.

Although that doesn’t always work either.  I  picked something the other week before I got to the restaurant to meet a group of friends one night and I had to go woth whatever I’d picked. I didn’t fancy it by then ☺.  I still won’t ask for help!

Now and again, after we get up to go from somewhere. I notice there are people who show visable surprise as he unfurls his cane. Like it’s surprising that he can chat away, eat, drink and make me laugh like everyone else. It’s upsetting sometimes.

There are different parts in the eye. Some for peripheral, some close up, central and everything inbetween. Depends what parts don’t work. Like a car really. Little things can go wrong and stop working in the engine, but parts of the engine will still work without them.

So this is the theme and meaning of this post.

Misconceptions.

Don’t judge a book by it’s cover. Now he doesn’t read the whole thing, that would be nuts, but he knows if there is fish or seafood of any sort or anything veggie mainly, I’m in. So it makes life easier.

He wasn’t there though. So me not wanting to have someone read the whole thing to me thought, I came here last time, I’m at the seaside, I’ll have a battered fish, like last time. They’ll have that. Then proceeded afterwards to have food envy with the other meals people had ordered. Just because you didn’t know they were there. Little things like that make you not upset exactly, but a little mad at yourself and your predicament.

It’s like being a swan I like to think. Paddling away underneath it all whilst trying your very best to glide seemingly effortlessly on the surface. Gives you brain ache sometimes.

The truth is very different I’m imagining, to what you think or feel about these things above.

Having a large group of friends now with different degrees of sight loss. With different conditions, of all ages. I have found them to be enlightening and they have changed the beliefs that I had a few years ago. Taught me a whole lot without even trying. Me just quietly observing. Even after I had my diagnosis, starting this blog in 2019 and the steep learning curve I went through to understand my condition and what it entails. It was once so shocking, upsetting and so hard to comprehend.

Until I went to the sight loss course in May 2022, I thought everyone with a Guide dog or a white cane was completely blind. I’ve learnt that most are not. Only 2 to 8% of people are completely blind within the sight loss community.

Now something happened recently which annoyed the hell out of me but, I was told, quite rightly, to not let it bother me. Twice I was spoken to instead of my partner when it was him initially chatting away. Questions that needed answering mainly, like he isn’t capable of either stringing a sentence together, understanding words at all, being capable to answer.

I understand that it maybe hard to be faced with something you haven’t come across or understand and believe me, most people we come across are so brilliant and accommodating. When I’m walking alone I realise this. Nobody moves out of the way for me, but they do for Richard, because of the visual aid. The cane. People are mostly absolutely fantastic.

The way I’ve learnt is the best way to chat to people who are sight impaired is. Ask if you want to know more about them, their cane, dog, the person they actually are. How you’d speak with anyone else. You will find the most amazing people within the sight loss community. I’ve met the most extraordinary funny, intelligent, interesting and caring people I’ve ever come across.

Once you’ve got to know people. When talking, say their name first as it’s difficult if you can’t see clearly the people chatting in a group. They won’t always know it’s them you’re addressing personally if you just set out chatting without saying their name, then they’ll know you are speaking to them. If you refer to them by name first, then it’s easier all round for a chit chat. Simple!

So, misconceptions. These can easily be swept away. We don’t bite. We love people who ask us and are interested in finding out about how we came to be this way. Because we need to raise awareness, change misconceptions and create inclusivity. We are NOT our blindness, NOT our sight impairment.

I’m definitely not those big awful sunglasses that I hate with a passion, but ultimately need to wear to save pain and discomfort from light and glare.

We need people to see US. Not the dog, the cane, the dark glasses. Us.

We are a fantastically normal bunch of people just like you. Except our eyeballs don’t work properly.

You even might find a few lifelong pals along the way too.