My Disability is no cause for Inspiration

I’ve written about my identity as a blind person before, then as a teenager, and how I dislike the label of bravery being applied to me. All of that still stands, but today I was thinking about it a lot more.

In truth, I’ve been thinking about it a great deal recently, as I notice the way people around me behave. It’s very hard to write about specific events, as most involve family members and so publicly doing so can of course be difficult for everyone. But today something happened, that did not involve my family and I’d like to share it.

As everyone knows I’m studying abroad in Spain, and I left a week ago. My dad came with me to teach me routes, and so he’s been writing things on facebook while he’s been away, especially after our passports were stolen. So today he put up a post, just saying he was flying home tomorrow and everything is sorted here. Someone he knows commented that I am inspirational. I really, really hate that label being applied to me. Saying I am an inspiration suggests that I have gone above and beyond people’s expectations, which would be ok if I’d won a gold medal at the paralympics and therefor proved exceptional sporting ability, or discovered the cure for Ebola. But I haven’t, all I’m doing is living a very average life, and so calling me inspirational suggests that people had lower expectations of me in the first place.

It makes me very sad actually, that when people think of a disabled person having a normal life it seems shocking, and wonderful to them. I intend to go to university, get a job, maybe have children though I don’t know yet, but who does really. Basically, I intend to have a very average life. I shouldn’t be applauded for doing so. I always tell people, if you wouldn’t think it’s inspirational if my sighted sister did it, why should it be if I do. My sister has a small child, when he was first born, she was of course expected to change him, feed him, make sure he was well cared for. Meeting those expectations was nothing unusual, because it’s something new parents are expected to do. Yet if I had a child and looked after it well, people would talk about how wonderful it is that I could cope doing so. As if my blindness automatically makes me a danger around a young life, and the fact that I care about my baby to raise it properly is amazing. It’s one reason why the prospect of having children makes me a little sad, because people won’t see me as a normal parent, they’ll see me as something special, when all I would be doing is meeting the basic needs of my child.

Ultimately I’m sick of being treated as less than human. I’m sick of people making me into something amazing, something to look at and get warm fuzzy feelings from. I don’t want to be your inspiration. The fact that I get up and am happy with my life shouldn’t make you feel good inside. Honestly all that tells me is that you’re actually not much of a person, the fact that you see the blind girl, and not me, the person who loves to travel, who reads a huge amount and who has a whole list of things she wants to achieve. Why should I be your inspiration when all I do is be happy, and live the life that for anyone else you would find boring and the expectation of someone their age. I think in society disabled people have been glorified, they are these helpless beings who when they do something extremely ordinary suddenly become gods. Here’s a wake up call, we are just like you. Some of us are very sociable, some like our own time. Some of us like to read and others like to play sports, to cook, to draw, to build cars. We may have physical, sensory or mental differences that separate us biologically from you, but isn’t that just like how some people are tall and others are short? Just because one thing about us isn’t the same does not make us a whole other class of humans.

Don’t make me your inspiration. Don’t capitalise on my disability, use it to make yourself feel good about your life. If you want to feel good, then do things you love. Find something that genuinely makes you happy and improve your life in a lasting way. I say this not to push people away, but to try and help them. Because what I do is very ordinary, and firstly I have no desire to be glorified for being normal, and secondly, what you will personally get out of it is very minimal, and shallow. Taking concrete steps to find true inspiration in your life would be so much better for you, and me in the long run.