My attitude towards my vision impairment: A 10 year timeline

I know that I could have benefited from reading a post like this back in 2010, and in the years that followed. So, I’m hoping that, if you’re a fellow blind/VI person, you might be able to relate to some of what I have to say, and perhaps feel reassured that you’re not the only one. 

So let’s get started, shall we? 10 years worth of emotions – this is going to be a long one. 

MY ATTITUDE TOWARDS MY VISION IMPAIRMENT: A 10 YEAR TIMELINE

2010: SEARCHING FOR ANSWERS

2010 was the year that the fact I was losing my eyesight started to feel a lot more real for me. Now, you’re probably thinking, ‘But you had already been living with your diagnosis for six years before this’, and yes, you would be right. But I was a child – a very confused one at that – so it was a while before I realised that the rest of the world didn’t view it through blurry lenses like I did. 

I, of course, grew to understand that I couldn’t see the world like everyone else as I bundled through my childhood and, aged 11, I was slowly grasping a better understanding of how to navigate life as a disabled person. 

But a few months down the line, just short of a couple of months after my twelfth birthday, I suddenly had this whopping big label that, I won’t lie, weighed heavily on my shoulders for a while there. 

To me, it signalled the fact that continuous deterioration was inevitable. A daunting thought for many I can imagine. 

In a way, I had only just come to terms with the fact that I was partially sighted so then, to hear someone utter the word ‘blind’, felt like quite the kick. 

I should say that I still had a fair amount of remaining eyesight at the time. Most often than not, ‘blind’ doesn’t mean complete darkness. It’s a spectrum, something that looks different to everyone. I was only slowly experiencing deterioration when I was registered but it was enough to deem my eyesight too poor for the partially sighted band. 

Anyway, I was just a year away from the starting line of teenage-hood and knowing that my level of eyesight was going to slide closer to ‘blind’ than ‘partially sighted’ during the years that were already set to be full of change, terrified me. 

So, I naturally took to Google in search of some answers.

I longed for this reassurance that I wasn’t the only one, in order to ease some of the confusion I felt, so I searched endlessly for stories and personal accounts from others who were in a similar situation to me. 

But my searches often came back redundant. I was constantly being met with stats and medical observations that didn’t exactly prove helpful or comforting. 

I don’t know how many pages of the internet I scrolled through but it’s safe to say that the questions I had were still with me for the next few years. 

I imagine that it would be a very different story if I was searching now however, thanks to so many blogs that populate search results these days. But, back then, not being able to find that reassurance tarnished the positive attitude I was desperate to harness at the time. 

2011: KEEPING QUIET

My vision impairment seemed to be centred in many jokes and judgements at school, and I felt as though I needed to hide it away in order to lessen the impact and frequency of the comments that were being made about me. 

My sense of self-worth was plummeting because of these judgements, and I found myself trying to compensate by saying I could see something when I couldn’t, just to feel closer to others my age. 

My attitude was very much, ‘If I don’t talk about it, it won’t feel as real.’ This was a very damaging mindset of course, but it’s a thought that coloured most of 2011 for me. 

All I can say to anyone else who might be in a similar situation is this; Don’t hide your vision impairment away in order to ‘fit in’, you’re worth so much more than that. And trying to be ‘normal’ is no fun anyway.

2014: CONFUSION

My eyesight had been steadily deteriorating for a while but it’s in 2014 that things started to go rather pear-shaped. 

It was just before my GCSE exams that I found myself on a downward spiral (what perfect timing). My eyesight was deteriorating at a rate it had never done before which meant that my thoughts were peppered with countless questions. 

The deterioration warranted a different approach to how I completed work so, not only was I confused by the differing way I now saw the world, but also by the practical aspects of having to learn braille in French, as well as brushing up on my Welsh and English braille, as this was now the medium I’d be doing my exams through since large print was no longer an option for me. 

I invested so much energy in up-keeping my positive nature but my days were laced with conflicting emotions; I was hopelessly optimistic on some, ready to tackle the ensuing extra braille lessons with a helping of ‘Yes, I can do this!’ Whilst, on others, I struggled to comprehend what was happening. 

I muddled through it all and came out the other side feeling quite proud of what I had achieved, but it’s safe to say that 2014 was confusion central. 

2015: RESENTMENT 

As my eyesight continued to deteriorate, resentment was left as a residue, meaning that 2015 was one of the toughest years I’ve waded through, sight loss wise. 

It didn’t erase the positivity or the level of acceptance I had reached before, but it did a pretty good job in trying. 

I wasn’t particularly sure how to address this resentment either and it felt like I was slipping back to my old ways, retracting back into my shell and wanting to hide away. 

I resented the fact that my world was fading before me; I resented the fact that I couldn’t embark on the exciting journey of learning to drive like my peers were doing at the time; And some days, I just resented the fact that sight loss was my reality. 

I turned to writing my thoughts and feelings down in order to remedy the anxiety I felt so acutely at the time, and this did result in something positive since it lead me to create my blog.

Although I wasn’t being very vocal about my worries offline, tapping out some thoughts and experiences on my blog was the start of something; a slight crack to the shell that all my feelings had been housed in for years. 

And slowly, thoughts and emotions I had never expressed before started to peek out from the cracks, and then, well, you can scroll through the archives on here to see how my openness has progressed. It’s quite the evolution. 

I can’t sit here and say that the resentment completely dissipated, but writing about it, even in personal documents on my laptop, sure did help to take some of the edge off. 

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2016: WANTING MORE

2016 was the year that I really took the reins in terms of finding the independence I had been longing for for years. 

I was reintroduced to the cane in 2015 and, despite the initial resentment I felt towards that too, I slowly familiarised myself with the benefits it could introduce to my life. 

Wanting more was my attitude throughout 2016. I had this urge to reimagine what a healthy and positive mindset looked like to me and, the first step to achieving it, was to take hold of my independence since it had felt a little lost amongst the deterioration. 

I became more confident in using my cane, it was a very gradual process of course with self-consciousness still threading through my thoughts but, armed with some determination, I was finally working towards where I wanted to be. 

I secured my first job, working in the charity sector, as well as achieving A-Level results that I was proud of. And, despite being bitterly shy in explaining my vision impairment in an Access to Work assessment because of what felt like intrusive quizzing about my condition and how it impacted my life, I was slowly growing into more of a confident version of myself.  

2017: IT IS WHAT IT IS

I mustered much more of a relaxed attitude to my vision impairment in 2017, whether that was healthy or not is still up for debate. 

But I wanted to take a breath. I wanted to lean into more of a positive mindset; a continuum of what I started to map out in 2016.

I knew that deterioration was going to be a prevalent part in my day-to-day life, there was no escaping it now, and so I picked through my days in a state of ‘It is what it is’. 

I did hit a rough patch a few months into 2017, (I had a blog post to prove it, until I hit the delete button a few months ago), but I learned that this was just typical of my sight loss journey now so I didn’t do much to address it. Which leads us on to 2018…

2018: ADDRESSING IT, THE RIGHT WAY

I think I subconsciously brushed a lot of things under the carpet in 2017, and so, those feelings that I made dormant resurfaced in 2018. 

I knew I needed to do something, and I had reached the point of not wanting to copy the trend of my younger self by disregarding what I was feeling. 

So, instead of ignoring my emotions this time around, I took the liberty and reached out to a sight loss counselling service. 

I had already grasped how comforting it could be to talk to others in a similar situation through the community on my blog and social media, but talking to a professional also really helped me to hone in on thoughts that I would have never addressed in such a way before. 

I’m not saying that it resolved everything, but it definitely helped to guide me through some things that needed addressing. 

2018 was the beginning of recognising when I needed to reach out for help and how I could take on the world in the healthiest way for me. It definitely constituted much more of a healthy attitude and noting it down sure does help me to recognise that. 

2019: GRIEF

Grief is a feeling that has always slotted in-between many moments of positivity and happiness for me. 

But, despite the sense of grief I’ve felt in the past, it was last year that it was magnified in more of a vivid form. 

I wrote an in-depth account of some of the feelings I was experiencing back in September last year, grief made an appearance there before snatching the spotlight for its own post earlier this year. 

It’s not a topic that’s often talked about in relation to sight loss/disability which is why I decided to highlight some of my own experiences with grief. 

Although it didn’t permeate the entirety of 2019, it was always there somewhere, a background hum – if you will – as I went about my day-to-day life. 

2020: A BIT OF EVERYTHING 

Oh 2020. What can I say? 

It has been a strange old year and the same goes for my attitude towards my vision impairment. 

Although my positive mindset often carries me through, some of my previous attitudes are sometimes revived in moments of uncertainty, but I’m learning that this is only natural. 

I’d say that I’m in much of a balanced place when it comes to my vision impairment nowadays, although hiccups are a given. 

Every attitude or emotion I’ve mentioned here has played a big part in my sight loss journey and yes, sometimes they do make a comeback, some never went away, but I’ve reached a point where I feel more confident in addressing them, and doing so the right way. 

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Reminiscing these past 10 years has been quite the task let me tell you, but it has also given me the opportunity to reflect and to draw on how much has changed. 

As you can tell, reaching where I am today has by no means been an effortless journey, but I think I’ve needed to have every attitude, to feel every emotion, and to experience the things I have, in order to build today’s overall approach to my impairment. 

Positive reframing has always threaded through my comeback approach whenever I’ve found myself struggling, and, although I experience the bad days, I’m happy with the progress I’ve made. 

From 2015 onwards, I’ve captured so many of the feelings I’ve felt towards my vision impairment, so if you want to explore something I’ve mentioned today further, I probably have a blog post for that. 

Over the years, I’ve become more sure of myself and what can help me along this unpredictable journey. Through years of different attitudes, thoughts, feelings and experiences, I’ve gleaned how sight loss impacts my life and how I can address it in the healthiest way moving forward. 

I’d love to know what kind of attitude you have towards your vision impairment or disability. Can you relate to anything I’ve mentioned in this post? I’ve found that no one day, or week, or year, is ever the same in terms of how I feel about being vision impaired, but how I’m addressing those feelings is becoming more consistent. 

Unlike my twelve-year-old self, I no longer feel scared to open up, I think that has been the biggest change in the last decade and definitely the one that makes a positive difference. And of course now, a simple Google search or a log in to Twitter, leads me to others in a similar situation, something that will forever act as a reminder that I’m not the only one, a realisation that can do wonders. 

Elin x