Yamallama0330

My computer is on the fritz. The charger only works when it feels like it and even when it works, sometimes when I'm using it the battery drains faster than it recharges.

It just happened again. A young blind girl who goes by u/yamallama0330 was sick of the pity and lashed out at her parents, then came to r/Blind to ask if she went too far -

"I am a blind teen and live a pretty freaking lively life. I do Taekwondo, I do horseback riding, I’m a head producer for a student led feature length film, I’m in multiple academic honors societies, I LITERALLY WORK AT QDOBA, and I’m always just the blind girl.

"Everyone looks at me with pity, and the comments I get are unbearable.

"Why do people think that everyone wants to be cured, or that we can’t live fulfilling lives? “I’ll pray for your cure”, “oh you’re so pretty for a blind girl!”, “you can’t work, you’re blind”. Literally so sick and tired of it.

"My parents are pushing for a cure, genetic testing and pokes and prods at my eyes. I don’t WANT to be cured, I’m fine as I am!! Just because I can’t see doesn’t mean I’m incompetent, a shut in, a loner.

"I yelled at them, screamed at them. No one understands me, no one understands how painful it is to hear loved ones say they would kill themselves if they were blind like me..."

I wrote a book in response because I don't know how to edit, but right before I posted my reply to her on Reddit my computer decided it was a lovely time to run out of juice and take a nap.

Figures.

This won't be as good as what I just lost because what I just lost was for the young blind girl. This is for an audience. I always seem to lose my flow when writing for an audience. I get self conscious and nervous.

But I have to try anyway. u/yamallama0330 deserves to hear the truth.

My blindness is caused by a genetic mutation. Nobody else in my family is blind. Genetic testing couldn't match my blindness to any other in the database. The doctors think the genetic mutation might not be inherited, it might have began with me.

There's a good chance some of my kids and grandkids already carry my blind genes. Statistically speaking a few of them will go blind, and there's nothing anybody can do to stop it.

My blindness is both a gift and a burden. It's a gift because I'm happier now than I've ever been before. Blindness took me out of the workaholic headspace I lived in. It gave me permission to spend my time how I want to. It put me squarely in the moment. And working through my blind bucket list has been incredibly fun!

But blindness is also a burden. I don't get to laugh at memes anymore. I don't get to marvel at the rising sun. Movies and television might be more accessible today but I'll never get the full impact of them again.

Still, all things considered, I'm glad this happened to me. Blindness has been more of a gift than a burden.

Yet I don't want my kids or grandkids to go blind.

Does that make me a hypocrite?

Blindness is not a tragedy - it's merely an inconvenience. If you feel sorry for me you're tempting me to feel sorry for myself. If you pity me you're telling me I'm pitiful without my eyesight. If you make a big deal out of my new limitations you're robbing me of the credit I deserve for overcoming them. I don't want anybody to treat me any differently today than they did two years ago when I could still see.

As a blind man I empathize with u/yamallama0330's frustration at getting pitied by her parents.

As a parent and grandparent of some kids that will probably go blind themselves, I sympathize with yamallama's parents.

Hashtag it's_complicated.

What I really want for myself is to see again but keep the life lessons blindness has taught me.

I want my kids to learn those same life lessons vicariously, through me. I want them to gain the perspective on life blindness taught me but I want them to gain it without losing their vision.

And I don't know if that's even possible.

To see is better than to not see. But I feel more complete and whole than I ever have before.

Hashtag it's_really_complicated.

Maybe the only thing to say is we aren't human seeings, we're human beings. Our vision might be broken but we aren't. Our eyes might need fixing but we don't. Our lack of eyesight might be tragic but we aren't.

We are not our blindness, we are ourselves.

As long as others see us as blind people instead of people who are blind we'll never be truly understood.