Eureka

I finally know why people don’t think I’m blind. I ran into a woman on the street yesterday who just kept looking at me in shock. She said that she had a friend who is blind and she says to me “you’re not blind”.
I was raised to appear not blind for 40 years I pretended I wasn’t blind. Part of my socialization was the installation of behaviours to appear sighted. One behaviour is to look at people who are talking to you. Look is a loaded word looking in the direction of the person speaking is a different from looking towards the speaker and seeing them. Just because I look your way doesn’t mean I can physically see you.
Sighted people get crazy when you don’t look at them when they’re talking, they think your don’t want to talk to them or your bored. I have colleagues and friends that when I look away tell me “I’m sorry I’m waisting your time” and leave. I’ve never been able to get anyone by this. I’ve seriously lost jobs for not pretending I’m blind enough. I can totally understand if people won’t look at me, even if I can’t see them, I won’t deal with them. I think its a trust thing.
Faces are easy things to find. With facial vision you can actually feel faces or someone pointed towards you from a distance. Eye’s are even more powerful and easy to feel. Its easy to feel someone looking at you. A team of mine from Microsoft thought I was full of beans when I told them this. They were sitting in a group together at a cafeteria, I walked in and they all stared at me.. It took a moment from a distance but I felt them and turn. We all had a good laugh.
Here’s an experiment for you, sit and relax do whatever it takes for you meditate listen to music whatever. Clear you mind and close your eyes. Run your hand in front of your face, palm facing your face. Do this until you can feel the difference from your face and above and below your face. Once you kinda have that going for you open your eyes and feel how different that feels over and above your face. Just to be clear you’re not touching your face your running your hand in front of it.
We’ll at least I know why people don’t think I’m disabled, blind.. Try that experiment and let me know ho you make out with that.