The expectation to talk about blindness

I’ve posted here before about how often I encounter a preoccupation with my blindness and particularly the need to ‘know’ details about my eyesight before moving on to a proper conversation, working together, providing me with directions to a shop or whatever. People often want to know the name of my eye condition, but most often, it is ‘how much’ I can see that interests them most. Their belief must be that somehow, if they knew the facts, if I would only give them a name and a number, they would then be able to move on enough to be able to deal with me and speak to me about other things.

 

Implicit in the questions is an assumption that I know all about the clinical diagnosis, am interested in it and that I could describe ‘how much’ I can see. The truth of the matter is that I have no idea ‘how much I can see’. The very question implies a comparison, and generally requires me to be able to provide a relative comparison with ‘normal’ sight. I really have no idea how to describe ‘how much’ I see as I’ve never seen any differently. My sight is contextual and I know what I see in different circumstances. It is easier to describe ‘what’ I see at any time, than how much,  but even now in my late 50s, I am continually honing my understanding of my eyesight in order to work with it as well as I can.

 

While it is acceptable for sighted people to be fascinated by my small amount of eyesight, it is apparently not so for me to be fascinated with their abundance of it. I’ve often, in an attempt to playfully make the point, thrown the question back by saying, “well, you tell me how much you can see”. It is generally met with a little (as in belittling) dismissive laugh, silence  or a comment like “I can’t tell you because I can see normally”.

 

I guess that beneath the clumsiness of these poorly articulated questions, the interest is really about the difference that I present. and while this is also of interest to me too, it comes from people who, and in situations where, the nature of the relationship does not warrant such depth of exploration.

 

I’ve never felt comfortable responding to these questions as they feel voyeuristic and intrusive, only serving to  expose the disconnection and impossibility of real relationship emerging. Refusal to provide the information, however gently explained, tends not to be met favourably and I’m left feeling either that I’ve given too much, or am seen as troublesome or unnecessarily argumentative.

 

I note how, throughout my life, I haven’t tended to develop friendships with the people who, albeit benignly, have started by expressing such a need to know. Instead, Friends’ awareness of me as a blind person has emerged through spending time together which is of course how most people get to know each other. Connections made through shared experiences or interests, discovered similarities or differences, similar ways of thinking or conducting conversations, humour and so on.

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