A few thoughts on 'balance'

This blog isn’t intended to be objective, nor to provide a ‘balanced’ insight into my life – which would mean me putting all the difficult encounters into proportionate context with all the positive/respectful/’normal’ experiences. I write about the things that I’m particularly struck by, that irritate, upset, disturb or amuse  me in day to day encounters.

 

I should own up then that my life is good, it is difficult (often it feels more and more difficult) but I don’t feel that I need to spend so much time on describing all those people close to me and all the strangers who communicate with me normally – I don’t want this to be seen as something strange or to be grateful for and yet sometimes I feel like I do want to affirm people for just treating me normally, fairly, on the level or whatever, particularly in situations where this is unusual.

 

I want to highlight here the things that happen so often that are not OK, that are weird, that come from positions of hostility, scorn, malice. It is so easy to become used to such behaviours that I almost forget about them or think that they are normal. There is still a great pressure on disabled people to put up with some absolutely abnormal behaviours, to manage them, ignore their impact, explain them away or even justify them. I want to expose those things for what they are and wonder about them.

 

So I unapologetically  don’t counter my critiques, descriptions and recollections of negative experiences with an accurate proportion of qualifiers to say that it isn’t ‘everyone’ or even ‘most’ sighted people who do all this stuff that I talk about. I do not exaggerate the descriptions of the situations that I’ve found myself in or the things that have been said- I haven’t had to. This is a blog and I want to expose the breadth of those day to day things that I get fed up with being told so much -how much better things are now…

 

Regular readers will know well that it is of particular interest to me why there are such stark contrasts of engagement with me (and other blind/disabled people). Why it is that in the same work group, doctor’s surgery, hospital, shop, café, pub, restaurant, bus queue etc, there are people who would not but communicate with me in the same tone of voice and conveying the same level of respect/pleasure/seriousness/contempt/irritability/disdain/etc as they would everyone else, and those who switch into a different mode to speak to me and then, as quickly  out of it again to speak to others. I used to think that such people must be aware of what they are doing and make some semi-rational justification for it (and critique of those who don’t talk down to me). However, I now think I was probably more expectant and hopeful about the level of consciousness with which they act.

 

 

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