Finding my Way Through the Years

I started to write this blog eleven years ago, when I was coming to the end of a tumultuous first year in a mainstream sixth form, after spending the first five years of secondary school at a blind school. I had recently turned seventeen and was filled with insecurities. I had high hopes for my future, but I was also terrified. If you looked back on my writing from then, it would be hard to recognise the person I am now. And yet there are glimpses of me in those words. It’s difficult for people to look back, as I’ve removed much of the content I wrote then. I took it down for my own reasons, but some days I wonder if that has only created distance between myself and others, who aren’t able to see how I have evolved and grown in the intervening years.

At seventeen, I couldn’t go outside without someone holding my hand. I mean that in a literal sense. I owned a cane, had been taught to use it, but I couldn’t do it. I felt like I was drowning every time I tried to step outside alone. At seventeen, I had never walked to the shop that was only a minute or two from my house to buy a coke when I wanted one. I had never taken a bus alone. And yet if you’d known all of the activities I participated in, you’d never have guessed. I played goalball. I took both voice and clarinet lessons. I attended a local youth theatre group. I was so busy, but my ability to be busy hinged on others helping me, or the guarantee that I’d have the money to pay for a taxi to get where I needed to go.

As well as fear, I was filled with guilt and shame. I felt guilty for wasting all of the effort people had put in to teaching me those skills. I felt guilty that my friends had to walk me around the school, taking time out of their lunch break to help me buy food, or making sure I got to and from my classes safely. And I felt so, so ashamed that this was the person I was and I presumed would always be. I knew that my system was fragile and dependent on nobody suddenly needing to rush off, and I knew that one day it might fail.

One day it did fail. It was time to head to our afternoon classes, and everyone around me began to get up and leave. I had been studying in a different part of the school over lunch, and I didn’t know who was around me. I was too scared and embarrassed to ask for help, my whole body freezing in my seat. And as the crowd dwindled to nothing I suddenly realised that there was nobody to help me and I had no idea how I would get to class. So I didn’t go. I sat there, frozen in a moment of panic that seemed to go on forever.

My teaching assistant found me. Her job was to put all of my books and other class work into braille, and she was incredible at it. She didn’t come to class with me, but she knew my schedule, and had presumably been told that I wasn’t where I was supposed to be. Somehow I found the words to tell her what had happened, to let her in on the fear I had felt. We exchanged numbers, and I could text her if I was ever stuck in future. It wasn’t a fix, it didn’t change the fact that I was still unable to move around without wanting to tear at my own skin, but it was a kindness that I had not expected from anyone.

I want to be clear. There is nothing wrong with being a blind person who chooses to be guided. There is nothing wrong with not knowing how to use a cane, or not being sure that a cane is right for you in that moment. I believe that independence is a myth, a standard which disabled people are forced to demonstrate over and over again in ways non-disabled people are not. The thing that was wrong about this situation was that I so desperately wanted to be able to travel by myself, but I didn’t know how I ever could.

It has taken years to get to the point where I am now. I can’t count the number of times I’ve cried along the way. Or the number of days I’ve made plans and then decided to put them on hold, because I do not have the mental energy required to face the world as a blind person. I was learning a route through the city centre earlier this week, and by the time I was done I had a headache and knew that my body had given all it possibly could and I would now be paying the price for the focus I had dedicated to learning such a complex environment.

I don’t know if all blind people feel this way. But I expect that more of us do than want to admit it. It may not be in respect to travel. It may be when using technology, or cooking with no vision, or having to get to grips with a new filing system at work. Perhaps it’s the coffee maker your family have just put in the kitchen that you desperately want to use, but that requires you to memorise several lengthy menus because unlike the rest of them, you cannot read the screen.

The world expects so much of us, and at the same time it also expects nothing. Most people would be quite comfortable with the idea of a blind person doing nothing for the rest of their life, because they think us so useless and blindness so terrible that it is only reasonable that we stay in one place forever. Yet those same people fail to recognise the energy that we must give when we do choose to go out, to get an education or a job, to have a family, to be free, in whatever form that takes. Most people do not consider that the world is built for the convenience of those who can see, not those who cannot. And so we are always adapting, finding our own way through environments that make little sense to us at all.

 I think many of us as blind people feel the pressure to prove to the world that we can, because we want sighted people to value us and recognise that we can meaningfully contribute. And so we also place those same expectations on other blind people. You must walk by yourself, or other people will think we are all unable to do so. You must cook that meal. You must know how to format a presentation. You must fit into this world, even if there is no place that has been carved out for you.

Yet I can’t help thinking back to that seventeen-year-old who was so filled with shame at not being able to find a place to not just land, but thrive. I do believe that as blind people we should do all of the things that we want to do, that we should push ourselves to learn and grow, because it is so important for all humans to do so. But when encouraging people to do this, we should never lose sight of how hard it can be. We should never forget where we came from. We should never hide our scars, most which lurk beneath our skin. I was able to learn and grow because of people who extended their hand to me, who taught me, who let me try new things. I didn’t grow by being judged or condemned, after all, I was doing plenty of that myself, I didn’t need it from the rest of the world.

Perhaps in eleven years I will write something entirely different, my views have certainly evolved from when I started this blog so there is no reason to believe they won’t again. I don’t claim to be perfect, or to do blindness the “right” way, because there is no right way. All I know is that I am doing my best, as I was then, frozen in my seat after lunch that day so long ago. My best looks different now, never perfect, but always trying to learn a little more.