I have been in training at the Colorado Center for the Blind for two months. Moving to another country no longer feels strange to me, I feel as though I never manage to settle in one place for very long before I pack up my things and head somewhere else. Change, whilst incredibly disruptive, provides me with the interest and variety that I need in order to survive.
Whilst I’m used to moving, I am not used to being one of many blind people. For the last ten or so years I’ve been one of very few, if not the only, blind person everywhere I go. I have had to adapt, advocate for myself and navigate a world that isn’t designed for me. I appreciate these experiences because they have shown me that I can be a blind adult, that I can make my own choices, that no matter what people think of blindness I can show them that it does not determine how I choose to live my life.
In many ways my experiences make me value being at CCB even more. I don’t have to show people here how great of a blind person I am, or that blindness isn’t a barrier to success or happiness. Everyone knows about blindness because like me they live it every single day. I can tell people here that I’m planning to do something and instead of asking me how a blind person will do that, they will share their resources and experience with me so that I am able to do it. Instead of being met with concern and fear as I travel, I am given encouragement and sometimes a necessary push to make me step out of my comfort zone.
At CCB, blindness means everything and nothing all at once. Blindness is what brings us all here to training, and what gives the instructors the experience to work with us. But blindness is not what determines what we can and can’t do.
I take classes from Monday to Friday. Every day I have cane travel, home management, philosophy, technology, enrichment and braille. Whilst we all have a schedule students in the same classes will often be focusing on vastly different things. For someone like myself who was already living on my own and who likes to cook, I might work on perfecting the things I am interested in. Another student might be learning to make lunch for the first time. In cane travel I spent some time learning how the traffic works in the US because it is so different from England.
It is hard to quantify how CCB has impacted my life in these short months. I could tell you about all my firsts, or the most challenging experiences I’ve had. These do go some way towards measuring how training is changing my life, but the truth is there is far more to it than that. I learn the most in the quiet moments. When my instructors share with me the honest truth that they are not perfect, that they make mistakes, that there is no such thing as a perfect blind person because there is no such thing as a perfect person at all. I have learnt by listening to others sharing their stories with me, understanding how blindness changes our lives in such different ways. I have watched students mourn lost relationships and celebrate new ones as they adapt to being a blind person in a sighted world. And I have shared my own losses and triumphs with them.
I used to think that in order to be a perfect blind person I shouldn’t let blindness change my life at all. But it does. Blindness doesn’t have to stop me from doing things, but I am a different person from the one I would be if I was sighted. Maybe I would have been the same person at least in part. I imagine that I’d still love books and traveling and the perfect quiet of stepping outside during the night. But I would not be the same, I couldn’t be. Blindness has made me resistant and determined. It has created my greatest strengths and my deepest insecurities. It isn’t all that I am, but it is present in every part of me.
In a little over four months I will graduate from CCB. I will have fulfilled several graduation requirements and it is those that everyone will talk about. But I wonder about the changes that nobody can see. The fears that I will have had to face, the fears I will not have had the courage to conquer. The impact this training is having and will have on my relationships. The knowledge about myself that I am gaining, some of which makes me proud and some, deeply ashamed. Where will I be after this? Who will I be? Which parts of me are constant and which will evolve, creating a new person.
My overwhelming fear is that after all of this I still won’t feel like I am enough. But now I wonder if I’m fighting to be enough for the world, or for myself.
Discover more from Catch These Words
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
My blindness journey was in the opposite direction. I lost the sight in my left eye in Bristol, UK in 2004, then I moved to atlanta, GA where my right eye folowed suit. Very similar to what you are doing in Colorado, I got a whole year of vision rehab training at Center for the Visually Impaired in Atlanta where I learned Braille, Activities of Daily Living, Technology, mobility, and job readiness.
I eventually worked up in Rochester, NY, right on the shore of Lake Ontario, about 45 mins drive from the Niagara Falls. Then my kidneys failed, my wife left me and I returned to the UK.
I find my life far more complicated as a blind person here. The grid layout of streets in American cities is far easier to navigate and you know a bus will stop at every major road intersection. Buildings were far more accessible and, sadly, my slight bit of vision I still had there has now diminished to almost zero.
I go everywhere sighted guide because I’m terrified I’m going to lose my bearings and not be able to find my way back to my house. admitedly I’m in a new house that I moved into a month ago, but it’s my confidence that has been shaken due to my poor orientation and mobility skills.
PS I had a job interview in Fort Collins, Colorado just before I became legally blind and got my vision rehab training. I found Fort Collins and Denver very nice places. I remember eating a meal in the Rocky Mountins and deciding I’d like the Mountin Oysters because I love oysters … luckily my wife told me what they were before I ordered them, haha! 🙂