Coexisting With The Blind
A quick bit of catch-up might be in order here. Last year, a clinical person insisted I go on the latest popular drug because all of the cool kids were doing it. Even though I objected on the grounds that the manufacturers warned against people in treatment for retinopathy taking it and The Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins, and Mayo backed them and me up on this, she persisted. In three weeks, I was on my way to being blinded by rapidly developing cataracts. My superpower lasted from November of 2024 to August of this year.
Relax. No one is getting sued. I am not a lawyer, but I am a trained paralegal. (Sit! Stay! Shepardize!) Litigation, especially malpractice suits, leave marks on everyone involved. I have better things to do with my time.
Relax. No one is getting sued. I am not a lawyer, but I am a trained paralegal. (Sit! Stay! Shepardize!) Litigation, especially malpractice suits, leave marks on everyone involved. I have better things to do with my time.
Most Americans have limited experience with blindness. Our exposure comes from pop culture references to Helen Keller or the older sister on Little House on the Prairie waking up screaming one day because her eyes no longer worked. As children, we might have closed our eyes or covered them with our hands to try to imagine what it would be like to be blind. It's a scary thought, the world you know, which is the world as you see it, goes away. The difference is you can always bring it right back by simply opening your eyes or moving your hands.
Blindness is a little more lasting. In my case, my world went to a soft gray void with occasional glimpses of blurry light sources or extremely saturated colors in my left eye. My cat became a lithe shadow who brushed against me and signaled her presence with meows. My books became rectangular cyphers that I feared were forever closed. Was this one Levi-Strauss on kinship? Was that one Tom Stoppard's Hapgood? Friends joked that I would spend the first few weeks after getting my sight back just looking at things. They weren't too far off. I stared out the windows of moving cars to see trees and trucks and billboards. Way too much time was probably spent in my hallway, reading the spines of books.
When asked what was the most striking thing for me during that time, it was less about the shift in sensory dependence and more about how people responded to my blindness. So here are some things to consider going forward.
1. Blindness might not be permanent. You know how we all have that one person in our lives who does not and never will like us and yet they try to hide it in case they need a favor? Mine had taken to gleefully flipping the bird at me thinking they were invisible until the day I got out my car keys, waved at them, and drove away.
2. Think before you speak. Please. I canceled all of my streaming services by phone a month in. One representative told me I didn't sound blind. What do blind people sound like? Stevie Wonder? Ray Charles? Helen Keller screaming her fingers off as she falls from a cliff?
3. Do not follow me into a restroom unless I ask for help. Mom.
4. I do not need to feel your face to "see" you. Lionel Richie made a video back in the eighties where he played an inappropriately Lloyd Doblerish teacher who sang to a blind student who made what could charitably be called a Sid and Marty Kroft version of his head in clay. I was in art school at the time and laughed like a horrible person at what was probably an earnest attempt to affirm that love was for everybody, even blind women who were bad at clay modeling. Decades later, Blind Me did not get any less evil about that video. If anything, like The Exorcist for Beetlejuice, it just got funnier and funnier.
On more than one occasion, people -complete strangers- have taken my hands and put them on their faces so I could "see" them Don't. Do. That. Please. It is so awkward, so unnecessary. If you aren't cringing later on when you think about this, please seek help.
5. It is okay to offer directions. When I asked where I needed to wait at various doctors' offices, I never lost a sense of right, left, forward, and so on. It is safe to assume that most blind people are used to working from helpful hints like that. Don't point and then get irritated if asked pesky questions about directions, ::cough:: Eye Clinic Receptionist ::cough::.
6. Fetishizing blind people is not flattering, it is weird and alarming. I had a rideshare driver wo loved to talk about all the blind people he drove around. He always mentioned how they shared details of their days with him. It made me uncomfortable, but I thought I was being oversensitive. Then it occurred to me what this sort of thing looks like. One day I told him a date had been set for surgery and he waved it off with, "Oh, you're always talking about getting your eyes fixed!" No, I had never discussed that with him. We usually talked about music or sports as way to deflect from talking about me. I didn't pursue the subject and he mentioned one of his other blind riders was doing her laundry. What was I doing today? I shrugged it off with a "Just hanging out" nonanswer and he passed up the turn to my house and asked me again, this time a little more pointedly, what I was doing today. As much as I hate bullying by privilege or education or intellect, I sighed and said I was getting my paperwork ready for grad school. He took me home in silence and to my relief, he never picked me up again.
Extra Bonus Post-Surgical Tip! Eye surgery can be grody looking. If you are squeamish or easily frightened, please think twice about picking people up from clinical places. 'MKay? When I was researching what would possibly happen, one of the things I was told was the prosthetic lenses might be recessed for a while, making me look like an alien or an android. Rilly? I wanted cool sci-fi eyes! It did not happen. However, the second eye was a little rough and the sclera was very bruised for a while. In fact, it was black.
The driver who picked me up from my first appointment after that operation was perfectly pleasant until he realized my eye was black. He refused to look at me, acknowledge me, and flinched if I tried to talk to him. Somehow, he managed to conduct the rest of the communication needed with my normal-looking mother. Before he pulled away from the office, he picked up his phone and made a hands-free call to his minister in Spanish. He told him he had a demon in the car. The minister asked him how he knew and he described me and reminded his minister that demons cannot completely hide from Christians. My other eye was perfectly normal except that shade of blue does not occur in Godly people. (Enreeky, I assure you it does.) He went on to say the nice lady with me did not seem upset and maybe didn't see my demonic eye. The minister asked him where he'd picked us up and he told him, "Vanderbilt Eye Institute."
There was a long pause. I could imagine this poor, underpaid minister thinking, "I went to seminary for this?" He told Enreeky to be nice to us, take us home, and then come by the church to get his car prayed over.
Enreeky, er, Enrique? Did you know White people sometimes learn Spanish for their work? We can understand what you are saying.
I hope all of this helps. Lordy, I hope it helps...
5. It is okay to offer directions. When I asked where I needed to wait at various doctors' offices, I never lost a sense of right, left, forward, and so on. It is safe to assume that most blind people are used to working from helpful hints like that. Don't point and then get irritated if asked pesky questions about directions, ::cough:: Eye Clinic Receptionist ::cough::.
6. Fetishizing blind people is not flattering, it is weird and alarming. I had a rideshare driver wo loved to talk about all the blind people he drove around. He always mentioned how they shared details of their days with him. It made me uncomfortable, but I thought I was being oversensitive. Then it occurred to me what this sort of thing looks like. One day I told him a date had been set for surgery and he waved it off with, "Oh, you're always talking about getting your eyes fixed!" No, I had never discussed that with him. We usually talked about music or sports as way to deflect from talking about me. I didn't pursue the subject and he mentioned one of his other blind riders was doing her laundry. What was I doing today? I shrugged it off with a "Just hanging out" nonanswer and he passed up the turn to my house and asked me again, this time a little more pointedly, what I was doing today. As much as I hate bullying by privilege or education or intellect, I sighed and said I was getting my paperwork ready for grad school. He took me home in silence and to my relief, he never picked me up again.
Extra Bonus Post-Surgical Tip! Eye surgery can be grody looking. If you are squeamish or easily frightened, please think twice about picking people up from clinical places. 'MKay? When I was researching what would possibly happen, one of the things I was told was the prosthetic lenses might be recessed for a while, making me look like an alien or an android. Rilly? I wanted cool sci-fi eyes! It did not happen. However, the second eye was a little rough and the sclera was very bruised for a while. In fact, it was black.
The driver who picked me up from my first appointment after that operation was perfectly pleasant until he realized my eye was black. He refused to look at me, acknowledge me, and flinched if I tried to talk to him. Somehow, he managed to conduct the rest of the communication needed with my normal-looking mother. Before he pulled away from the office, he picked up his phone and made a hands-free call to his minister in Spanish. He told him he had a demon in the car. The minister asked him how he knew and he described me and reminded his minister that demons cannot completely hide from Christians. My other eye was perfectly normal except that shade of blue does not occur in Godly people. (Enreeky, I assure you it does.) He went on to say the nice lady with me did not seem upset and maybe didn't see my demonic eye. The minister asked him where he'd picked us up and he told him, "Vanderbilt Eye Institute."
There was a long pause. I could imagine this poor, underpaid minister thinking, "I went to seminary for this?" He told Enreeky to be nice to us, take us home, and then come by the church to get his car prayed over.
Enreeky, er, Enrique? Did you know White people sometimes learn Spanish for their work? We can understand what you are saying.
I hope all of this helps. Lordy, I hope it helps...