DEAR FURY

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