People have often asked if I had some kind of breakdown when I discovered that I was blind. That the answer is a quite categorical "no" is largely because while I never had normal vision as a child, I didn't consider myself blind. And this was for the same reason that many people would still not consider me so - namely, that I could see. As an avid reader of books, I would have dismissed as absurd the notion that I was "blind".
I marvelled at how my dad was able to drive at night, reasoning - almost certainly correctly - that I would have crashed within seconds had I been in the driver's seat. But while this accentuated my feeling of inadequacy, it never made me consider what was different about my vision.
In much the same way, I marvelled at how people were able to manoeuvre around objects with so little difficulty, but I put this down to a dexterity that I did not possess. In fact, my visual difficulties were no more significant to me than my hearing loss or my shyness with girls.
It wasn't until I was 13 that my eye problem was given a name: retinitis pigmentosa. It's an inherited condition in which your eyesight gets progressively worse throughout your life. As far as I know, there's no treatment for it. My retina does not let in enough light, which makes life difficult in poorly lit buildings and at night. The other side-effect is a severely restricted field of vision. When people ask what all that means, I usually say tunnel vision and night blindness, which is not that far from the truth.
Surprisingly for some, my central focus is largely unaffected, so I can read a newspaper. Over the years, my hearing has remained static while my eyesight has got worse. But, although I am now officially labelled as "blind" (and have been since 1992), I can still read print without the need of any thing more advanced than good lighting. Most people assume that blind people can't see anything at all, but in fact very few people fit this description. This leads to situations such as the one recently where, as I was being led to a bus stop, I observed that a bus had just pulled out. "Oh, did you hear it?" my companion asked. "No, I saw it," I replied.
There's also a perception that sight loss forces the other senses to go into overdrive to compensate. This may be the case with some people, but not with me. I do not have razor-sharp hearing, nor am I able to recognise textures by the sound my stick makes against them, nor do I subconsciously count underground stops. In short, I don't do blindness "party tricks".
Anyway, my sight loss and hearing were not acute enough to justify my going to a special school, so I went to a mainstream primary, then for a year to a private school and last-off to the local public school. My parents could not have afforded to send me but for the fact that my mother taught there. Her presence, however, did not deter the bullies. (In later years I was to discover that bullying is more or less de rigueur for people with disabilities at mainstream schools, but I was not to know at the time.) Pinball wizard, the deaf, dumb and blind kid, was one of the wittier tags levelled at me near the end of my time at school. Not true, of course. I had locked myself in a world of my own as much as anything to keep sane, but I certainly could express myself and I had no difficulty in modulating my voice. The occasional ear infection, caused by water in my ears, was frustrating, as was the difficulty in following conversations when others were taking place around me, but the idea that a hearing aid would help, as was suggested by fellow schoolboys, was absurd.
It was all this bullying, I think, that made me deeply insecure, and in some senses I remained, for many years, in denial about my disability. What brought about a change in my attitude was an embarrassing incident about six years ago. Tripping over some roadworks one evening, my stream of profanities was stopped by a female hand. It turned out to be my boss. The next day she advised me to buy a white cane, and I could hardly argue. Nevertheless, it wasn't until I moved into a hostel for the blind, and then had a regrettable bust-up with a fully-sighted shopper who thought I was bumping into her deliberately, that I began to use the cane full time.
It's a strange, exhibitionistic world into which I am forced. Almost every day I am stared at by people wondering why this man who in no way looks blind - my eyes appear normal, which adds to the confusion - is using a white cane. Alternatively, they curiously flick their eyes at me, then quickly look straight ahead again. In fact, without the cane I would wobble about looking mad, or bad, and definitely dangerous to know.
If my appearance doesn't freak 'em out, then whipping out a book on the underground undoubtedly intrigues them. Actually, I wouldn't be remotely offended if someone did ask why I was carrying both a white stick and a novel, but people never do, perhaps out of politeness, or perhaps simply because they think it's some strange act - an absurd attempt to fit in.
Today I feel far more confident about wearing my status as a multiply disabled man, if not exactly with pride, at least without any sense of shame. I do, however, think that I would have probably benefited from using a white cane at least a decade before I finally started doing so.
It would be interesting to imagine how different my life would have been had I done so. I almost certainly would have been treated differently - and sadly this probably means patronised - but it would have also enabled me to avoid situations such as the one that occurred a week after I arrived for the first term at college. When visiting the pub with some housemates, I accidentally stood on someone's foot. Choosing to go home early, I found him waiting for me, ready to kick my head in - which he promptly proceeded to do.
I shrugged this off as bad luck at the time, and was surprised when a senior member of college staff appeared touched by my nonchalance. She interpreted my "shit happens" approach to life - an attitude shared by many people with disabilities - as bravery. Well, perhaps there is some courage in it. But I'm glad now that I get into fewer situations that require it.
