After more than fifteen years as a guide dog owner I now feel like a different person. I have a new business, a new home, new freedoms and I’ve returned to many old interests that I’d abandoned because of my sight loss. I have spoken about how I used to regard sight impairment as a stigma, a label that carried with it a badge, which I felt unable to wear. That day back in the hospital when I was put on the visual impairment register, I decided that if I must wear such a badge I would wear it whole-heartedly and with pride. I’m now a fully committed card-carrying blindy.
All of this is thanks to Abbot and now Jarvis I owe them everything. I can’t begin to tell you how much life has changed and how much better it is now. I look back on my old life and it’s almost as if it belonged to another person. Nevertheless, I have to admit that my sight impairment has left some scars that not even Abbot and Jarvis have been able to heal. On this very blog I’m sure you’ve noticed some bitterness...
I wasted too many years – from that day in 1987 when I was forced to give up my ‘proper job’ until almost ten years later – simply running away from being a blindy, a thing that scared me to the core.
Disappearing as I used to do for days on end and drinking myself silly was never a solution. As well as having my problems to face, I’d even have new ones because while I was in hiding I’d feel terrified that Denise would leave me not only because of my blindness or my unemployment, but also because of my latest disappearing act. If only I’d faced up to the truth sooner!
As I’ve already explained, my running and denial didn’t just hurt Denise (although that was bad enough) – it hurt so many other people too. I didn’t just quietly scuttle away on my own with my anger, I would mouth off to anyone who got in the way and I didn’t care who got caught in the crossfire. I feel deeply ashamed of the way I behaved. Some of the people from those times were eventually very supportive and were just pleased to see me get my act together in the end. But some of them couldn’t seem to move on because they were so hurt by my behaviour.
I deeply regret this and I miss them terribly. I wish more than anything that I could make things right with these people. I’ve held too many grudges myself against people who’ve hurt me and in the end these grudges have only served to disable me further. Who needs that? I know only too well, though, how hard it is to let go of old hurts. If you’re reading this and you’re one of the many people who holds a grudge against me, I hope you will contact me. I want to make amends because at last the running has stopped...
OK, OK, I’ll admit there are still odd days when I still want to get the hell away and drink myself into oblivion so as to numb the anger. It’s as I said earlier: I’m a recovering addict and I have to take each day at a time. On angry days I still go out looking for someone I can vent my spleen on. People who know me would never refer to me as laid-back but Abbot and now Jarvis have helped me to become a person who is much more at ease with himself and I’ll be forever in their debt.
I had always believed that to be open and honest about my sight loss would place me in far too vulnerable a position: a position where I would be at the mercy of those around me. But Abbot and Jarvis have filled me with a strength that I could never have imagined. I now know that I was much more vulnerable in my former life than I could ever be now.
What’s so amazing is that the very thing I feared so much really isn’t so scary after all, now that I’m here and facing it. I even like the way things are now! My biggest regret is that I didn’t wake up to the idea of a guide dog sooner. When I look back on all those years without a dog I can only shake my head and wonder.
Who knows what the future holds on the ‘road ahead’? I’m still afraid of the day when I will wake up and never see anything again. I know that one day the sight just won’t return again... and yes, I admit it, that still really scares me.
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