Interesting Dynamic

I do notice an interesting dynamic for me as a high functioning partially blind person that it seems I am very much straddling both worlds. I’m too blind to be sighted and I’m too sighted to be blind. There is an attitude that permeates the blind community that anyone with sight or some sight is or could be an enemy to the blind. Or someone with partial sight has denial issues b/c they need to allow themselves to be more blind and live like they are totally blind. It’s this whole “they think they are superior” or it’s “us vs. them” attitude that is prevalent. Then as a blind person I deal with the other side of the coin too with the sighted community. I don’t really fit in either one and it becomes very apparent at times. I think I would use this analogy as a comparison. An adopted black child into a white family would notice they are different somehow. They know they are loved and accepted by their family and friends, but they feel out of place among black people b/c they have a white family and they feel out of place in their white family b/c they are black. As much as we’d like that not to be the case there is always a noticeable difference in their mind and their perception of what goes through other people’s minds (some true and some not). I know that people care about me yet I know that I sort of stand out. I embarrass some family members and notice the questioning glances of some friends when I have my cane. They aren't quite ready to accept me this way. I just notice there is a difference between me and my sighted friends and family, and I notice a difference between me and my blind friends. To them I have a lot of sight and don’t understand them as well or identify the same. I just feel like I don’t fit. Bothers me more sometimes than it does at other times. I do have special friends that really enjoy trying to understand what I am learning and going through and that means a lot to me. I think I have this website for that reason. I really want people to “see” what I’m learning and love it when they show interest in this aspect of my life. I even have a friend that comes to the center regularly. That means a lot to me.


I noticed again how my visual field is affected. My blindness is so deceptive b/c your brain fills in the peripheral gaps with memory so you don’t really realize that you aren’t seeing what is there in real time. Rather it’s stored memory. My friend held up her hands for me to read and I noticed that as she held them up next to each other I had to actually look from one to the other and make her slow down in her counting (since we were trying to be extra quiet during the convention speech). I could not see them at the same time. I used to be able to count fingers on both hands without problem and know right away without having to process what I just saw. That is a small field. Hard to believe it’ll get significantly smaller. It was one of those “it hit me” moments. I couldn’t even blame it on poor lighting conditions.