It feels like hundreds of years since I have visited my own blog. My bones should have become brittle and my hair stark white. I will forever be in the waiting game, but this time, I return to this blog having been immersed in a different kind of writing and not simply buried under a rock. I needed to step away from prose and wash myself again in the fragrance of poetry. I have always been a poet, a writer, but for years I wasn’t writing. I struggled to stay afloat while trying to figure out how to be a disabled person. I had no job, therefore I felt I had no value.
I began to define myself as a disabled person who couldn’t contribute and forgot that I exist beyond my blindness. I allowed RP to steal my voice as well as my vision. After my diagnosis, I dove into the darkness and forgot about all the light that remained; I immersed myself in the task of becoming a blind person and forgot to pay attention to my pulse and my dreams.
I remember being in a workshop at one of my former jobs where we were asked to list words to define ourselves. If I had been asked to do that after I stopped working, I know the first word on my list would have been blind. Now, although blind will always be on the list, it no longer stands alone. I am wife, writer, friend, daughter, pug fanatic, and going blind.
March 16, 2015 at 12:15 pm
So often I remind myself, and insist to others, that disability is socially constructed. It lives in a society rather than people or families. Because cultures/societies create disability, they can also create opportunities fpr full, disability inclusive lives. We are all so much more than the disabilities that others may try to use in defining us. Thanks for the honest, direct post.
March 16, 2015 at 4:41 pm
I am so glad to read this, as I have seen you struggle for a long time. But it was something you had to go through yourself, and as always you found the right path. 🙂
February 5, 2018 at 7:29 pm
I so wanted to stand up and cheer for this one!!!
February 6, 2018 at 3:35 am
I do a lot of this; a lot of re-emerging. I think it is me never giving up hope, which sounds so corny – and I don’t normally do corny – but it is also true.
February 6, 2018 at 6:11 am
Yes…exactly…all part of you forging ahead.