I’ve been coming to a strange realization as of late. I have been legally blind, even with correction my whole life, but I’ve been really stubborn to admit these new realizations to myself. These new realizations I found were that I have a cane, but have never used it in public, at least not of late, this could help me a lot in most situations. I’ve never realized that it might help with the certain problem where people just automatically assume that I can see well when I can’t in a public place. I should have at least kept my cane out in open sight in these situations, even if i wasn’t using it. It could have helped me a lot.
The other realization I am having is that it could have helped me avoid a lot of uncomfortable situations where I couldn’t see and had to be careful, and I have suddenly come to realize that I have had a certain lack of security when not using it in every day life. I have to be a lot more careful than most people.
I didn’t realize just how common it is for people of even worse vision than me to use their canes and visual aids. I felt dumbfounded by this certain realization when I was reading personal stores of people that have even better vision than I do but still use their visual aids and canes often. I have never thought about it until my eye doctor said he is amazed how well I go through life without much help, I get around better than most people with my vision.
I’m not the kind of person that would be embarrassed about bringing a cane everywhere with me, or asking for help, or being recognized as being visually impaired.
I’ve read the personal stories of people that have worse vision than I do and they said that using a cane really helped them. They were like me and didn’t really want to use it at first but tried and loved it.
So I think I will try for myself as well. Maybe it will help me in more ways than one :)
