Liar Liar

I learned about those that feed off of others, people that bolster their own self esteem by praying on people like me who’ve had unhealthy self images. Thinking living believing that no one could possible want me. I learned the hard way about being someone or something I’m not. The pain, suffering for myself, and others that it causes to lie about who and what I am. The terrible disaster of truth when you can’t live a lie anymore. The ultimate betrayal to yourself and others when you can’t deliver on the pretend persona and reality. This is why I will likely never see my children again. They don’t know who I am and I’m so different from what they knew that I’m sure I’m absolutely alien to them.
In this process of healing and self discovery I learned about enablers. People that help you to lie to yourself, or worse insist you lie for them. To love me or be loved by me you will not be blind!! People that accommodate you in a belief about yourself that is ultimately destructive to you. Like I don’t really need a white cane, I’m not blind, or the comment when I was graduating from guide dog school, “Your not blind you don’t need that dog!!”.
It was a HARSH HARSH HARSH day for me when one of my closest mentors told me I was a liar. Hiding my disability and pretending not to be blind. My mentor went on to say if people find out your hiding your disability then they will wonder what else your lying about. It took me years for the message to sink in.
The personal healing I have had to do from being brought up in a family that enabled others to hide their disability and actively encouraged me to hide my disability. It was very important to consider and manage, control, what others thought. We had to be the perfect little family. It was a lot of work that thankfully I couldn’t do anymore.
Disclosure and living openly blind have been very very hard. There isn’t a day that goes by where I think. I don’t need this white cane, I don’t need these light filters, I don’t need this or that. I can pretend I can compensate. The truth is I can’t and I never could. People aren’t fooled. My experience is that if your trying to hide something it just sits there like the elephant in the room. People know its there but don’t say anything about it. Or they know there is an elephant in the room but don’t know the source of it. Either way its big obtrusive and smells bad.
Talking has proven to be a huge tool for me for healing. Blogging and living openly with blindness. Answering the questions educating being the ambassador. Freeing myself to talk is liberating.
Being silent when I was a blind man in the closet and people asked why I was doing something one way or if I made a mistake and they called me on it. I would say, “oh I’m visually impaired”, or “oh I’m legally blind but its no big deal really”. I’m still normal… I’d put the disability down, I’d put blind people down, “I’m NOT one of THOSE”. It reminds me of listening to my grandma who was Metis, half native Indian and half European, say “those dirty Indians”, when clearly she was at least half Indian. Its a hard thing being taught to hate part of yourself, or to think lessor of that part, or that its dirty, sinful, or bad.
Being silent about anything is so damaging. Its the same thing abusers force their victims to do. Don’t tell or you’ll die. Or don’t tell or someone else will die or be hurt and it will be your fault. In counseling there were many topics of being blind that I struggled with as I thought I would die. The trick was working through things one thing at a time, slowly at first, proving that if I talk about it or disclose it I’m not going to die. Irrational perhaps but very real.
In any healing process I’ve had to separate myself from my enablers. I’ve had to disengage and not contact those that enabled me to not be openly blind. Just as an alcoholic has to change the people around them I’ve had to change the people around me.
Talking is the only way to change. If you can’t acknowledge an issue you can’t come to accept it and ultimately change it.
I really like the new approach to counseling which is based on the premise that you are the best you can be right now, for the life that you have right now. If you want to change something in your life then you need to change something in yourself. Its just like a process of continuous improvement build on success as apposed to pointing out failures. When you focus on failure there is always punishment part of the process. When you focus on success then you can say well this is working but to do this differently I need to do these things differently. Its a building process as opposed to a tearing down process which rarely results in rebirth.
As you’ve read before I really am down on my family of origin. At this point in my healing I can’t get past the requirement to be something I can’t be. If you expect me to be something rather than accepting me for who and what I am. At this time I can’t deal with you. Its hard enough to be me without you expecting me to be something you think you need me to be. Don’t enable me anymore. If you can’t live with me being me and being openly blind, move along.