I doubt most people will get to the end of this blog as it
will be too close for comfort for the majority.
I’m on a bit of a rant. I’m rather cross with some opinions.
How dare people presume our lives as visually impaired people if they have
never walked in our shoes? I’m steaming I am.
People saying we should be positive. Really? Well, I would
like those people to visit or read some emails I receive not that I would pass
them on before my Bloggets get scared. But just to see what it is like in our
lives. Then perhaps they won’t preach from their bloody perfect worlds.
There are people in your wonderful worlds that never ever
leave the house. So you reply
“Well they should. There are guide dogs out there to assist.”
Oh very nice. So you are seventy eight could see yesterday and
today you woke up blind, so you just tattle off to the post office an buy a
guide dog? No you fool. You firstly don’t know who to call; you can’t see phone
numbers anymore. Then when you learn after the initial shock that you can
record numbers on a Dictaphone for example, you learn that you need to be
taught the long cane before you can go on a Guide Dog waiting list. Then you
can be on that list for two years. And not every religion wants a guide dog and
not every rented accommodation allows a
dog. Some people are allergic to animals too.
Your family don’t bother with you now you are blind. They
dare not call to see you as if they do they may be asked to do something for
you and this is a selfish world we live in. A lot of people don’t do for others
if it doesn’t benefit them.
So what do these people then do? I guess you, with the
narrow mind may say
“Pay for a service!” OK how? What with? A lot of blind
people don’t work and if they do and go blind suddenly they have to give up
their job also how to advertise when you can’t see and you are not used to
using technology? You lose your sight now and how will you type? Don’t think we
come ready for this crap you know.
Jobs, oh we are clever. We can get a job anywhere. Stupid person.
Doing what?
As a window cleaner? Builder? Doctor? There are fewer jobs
available now for people who are blind I have friends who have bachelors degrees
and are extremely intelligent who worked
really hard to get to where they are now as guess what? The university that
they applied for on paper are meant to look at us with an open and equal mind,
but At the end of the day, they are as ignorant as you.
Truth is, we have to work double if not as trebly hard to
get to university and that is OK for those who make the grades, but what about
those who don’t? For whatever reason. May be they didn’t have good schooling
because they went to a sighted school? May be they just can’t study, like you
would hope we would.
What was that you
said?
“No one is too old!”
Oh, so you are 58 and you need to go to University. OK,
study for three years making you 61, you are that age blind and go for an
interview along with 21 year olds. Who can see who may not need extra equipment
in the work place? Yep, you are really going to get that job, you ignoramus.
Talking about ill-informed people, if we do need tech in the
work place our bosses don’t always pay for it, either we do or access to work
so before you dismiss us, look into that?
And there is the fact, how do we get to work? Yes you, you
with your sighted eyes in your car you couldn’t be without for no more than a
couple of weeks, we don’t have that luxury we use the bus or expensive taxi
sometimes a train sometimes all three. Just to get us ten miles away taking us
over an hour where as you in your car can take that job and be there in ten
minutes.
My list lecture rant whatever you want to call it can go on
and may be it will but for now I need to go for a drink, and no, not alcoholic
though sometime you drive me to wanting that. But I have been robbed of my eyesight;
I’m not going to let you steel my liver too.
OK I’m back. I have been fed so I’m calm now, debating if I
should publish this blog, but I have received so many notifications emails etc.
with regards to such a subject. There are people who say that they don’t want
blindness shoved down their throats and I guess those people who think like
that haven’t even got this far in the blog. Well, that is a shame as those are
the people I wish to get to. Those of you in your ivory towers of success hope
happiness and problem free. This is the trouble with society; people have no
compassion or empathy for anyone other than themselves. I would love a day once
a year where by people were given contact lenses that blocked out all vision. You
had to go about your daily work. Even to boil a kettle you would struggle. Do
you know what it’s like to pour boiling water into a cup? We burn ourselves so
many times we don’t even count now. So come on, these lenses. You may say.
“Oh, that wouldn’t be fair as we are not used to that.”
Well, get you, guess what? Neither is most out of the people
who do lose their sight. We don’t have a dress rehearsal. And this for sure isn’t
an act.
Now, for those who have been blind all their lives or most
of them, I have friends who say they don’t mind being blind. Some say they
wouldn’t want their eyesight if they were offered. That’s fine, but not
everyone is you, and, firstly take away the fact that you probably have help at
some point of your week like from your parents, children, spouse, even a carer.
The amount of people who are so called positive blind people are actually not
always as they make out. I have spent time with people like this and they put on
a front for the outside world. Some people I knew for years and years that used
to or seamed to get a thrill kick whatever you call it by making people who
were not so confident feel inferior to
themselves. When I learned of these people how life was really like for them, I
was shocked and stepped back to take a look at their life and at first I felt
great anger as they made so many feel so bad when as a matter of fact, the
people feeling that way were in an actual much better state of life and
independence. So what I’m saying is, next time as a blind or partially sighted
person appears to you as some kind of super person, take a step back from the
situation and ask questions when you have observed for a while and realise that
yes they can get from A to B in the outside world and on their way to work,
they stop at a shop then even call in at a market I mean, I say, a market? How
does someone blind go to a market on their own? It turns out they either tell
lies or ask almost every single stall holder what they are selling, where they
need to go next and so on. But when they are telling you their story about
buying cheese from one stall, toffee from another and this and that, ask
yourself are they telling the truth or are you, prepared to spend your time to
buy three items asking half the market place where you are, where you need to
be and so on? The noise in those places makes it impossible to go as a blind
person on your own unless it’s a tiny market.
Those who say they do everything on their own, they over
compensate for what they can’t do. Now I’m not saying we as blind people are
hopeless, so come off your heigh horse, what I’m saying is just because we can
do some things stop presuming others should be able to as well. And if you can
see, until you live in a sighted world as a blind person, stop right there
acting like buffoons and just for a day imagine your life.
No, we can’t get a job no matter how clever we are without a
huge amount of stress. We can’t just walk into any roll. Our work has to be
something where you don’t need to see. We can do good jobs, better than sighted
in some case as we need to prove ourselves to the imbecilic minds out there. We
even have jobs with great responsibility like school teachers solicitors
directors and so on, but to get there? And who will take a chance on us? Don’t
get me wrong not everyone has the brain opinions and narrow mindedness of some
nincompoops, we do come across some wonderful people out there and I have
friends one in particular I talk about a lot in my blog bless her, good old JB
now she is amazing but, she will be the first to say that leaving the house she
also feels anxious. An yet she will go anywhere and do anything. But, when you
get to know her, she is honest and decent enough to be the first to say that
life can be tough and she doesn’t’ know how she would manage without the
support of her family, though, you will find her shopping in the middle of a
very busy shopping centre on her own, well, with her guide dog. But she has
been taught the routes and she is brave. That is all it is you know, to be
brave or mad however you look at it.
To those who say nothing would stop me if I were to go
blind, just take one day. One day where you wear and are honest about it, a
blind fold. Now, you are lucky, you can remove that. So when you need to go to
work the next day, as you are fortunate, you don’t have to prove you are the
best person for that job you don’t need to worry about who you are going to get on with
colleagues as just look at them. See their reaction to you. If they smile,
smile back. If they don’t look friendly, fine, move on. We can’t do that.
Close your eyes walk
around your house, and this is the house you are familiar with. Put the kettle on,
pour a cup of tea with milk sugar even, if you don’t take sugar, see how
difficult it is, to get sugar from the pot to the cup. You will be shocked at
how much mess you make. When I do it, I don’t make a mess, so how about now,
you have poured water all over the worktop and look at the spilt sugar, will I
laugh at you and tell you you are hopeless and keep practicing till you get it right,
or shall I say nothing drink the tea and be grateful I can see?
I wish.
Your dog needs to go to the toilet. You have to pick the
mess up. Try without sight. Try walking to the end of your drive I mean, surely
that is easy, wasn’t it you who said if I were blind I would not be kept in the
house? That was you, right?
So no, we don’t have cancer thank goodness, but a huge part
of us has either died or is dying. We grieve. Next time you see a blind person
walking down the street; just ask yourself how did they get to that part in
their lives? We don’t push a button and get there.
The sun is out and I want to walk along a beach. How do I
get there? Take a bus then train, when I get off the train, where next? A taxi
as I do not know the way. I can’t work my guide dog as no way she would work
with such pleasure at her paws. Even if she would how can I walk where I have
not been taught? Then, how do I get back what taxi wants a sandy dog?
I want to say so much more and I want to swear. My word, I’m
not the kind of person who feels good about swearing, I feel if you can’t think
of a better word to use, then that shows you are lacking in education and I’m
not talking about studying, just the book of life and language you know what is
right and wrong. So I apologise to those Etymologists
Among you all for not
using words you agree with but I don’t apologise to those who speak who have no
idea no right and no thought for what you have just said.
I have had moments whereby I have used words I’m not proud
of. But, it’s out of fury I don’t want to think at that point of my blog I want
to scratch you and pull your hungry hair out. Your sly skin needs to be under
my nails. You’re malevolent mouths should be shut!
The end
