I must confess to being fairly ambivalent about the plight of blind folk till I joined their ranks. Sure, they were around, but - as for most people - not really part of my world. I was happy to give a few dollars of conscience money on appeal days just as I did with all the other causes that didn’t really affect me personally. My reaction to someone with a white cane was a sort of distant sympathy, along the lines of ‘poor sod, but he/she seems to be getting about OK’.
It wasn’t until I found my sight was deteriorating at a somewhat quicker rate that I came to realise sight loss is a lot more complicated than most people (including me), really comprehend. Though yet not qualified for full membership, I am finding it a dark world, full of frustrations and obstacles. Politicians would, I suppose, describe it as ‘challenging’, but the word carries as little meaning in my world as I suspect it does in theirs.
Seeing trouble
The main goal for ‘blindies’ is independence, in one form or another. Meeting individual aspirations must be pretty tortuous for those trying to help us through the coping stages. I have a sort of DIY approach to this whole independence thing based on the theory that the achievable level can be gained by repetitive trial and error. It works fine for the most part, but depends entirely on consistency and I usually end up back at square one if too many variables creep in.
Currently I live in the middle ground. I have low vision rather than none at all, which does allow some amount of freedom, but it also carries the risk of overconfidence, thus boundaries need to be set. I can potter around safely at home for instance, but negotiating a busy street alone isn’t a reality anymore. Others seem to manage quite well, but I, quite simply, just don’t have the confidence anymore.
