Nothing is any better/ Suicide Stories

Nothing is any better

January 16th, 2014 by Greenz I’m a blind college student. I’m majoring in Information Technology in hopes of getting a job in the field; computers have always been fascinating to me. But something is just…not right. Being a freshman, I’m pretty new to the campus. It’s obviously very different from a high school, most notably because there’s a lot of buildings. Think about it – a bunch of lecture halls, cafeterias, theaters, etc. If you’ve had extensive training in cane travel (which I haven’t), I hear that navigation is really quite doable. For me – and keep in mind this is just *MY* experience – training has been pretty much nonexistent. A lady came out twice to help me learn a grand total of…two buildings. Cane travel, like most things, is taught in such a way as to build upon previous skills. If you don’t have much skill to begin with, you’re just about fucked.
There’s a common problem that most blind people face, and it actually has nothing to do with academics. And that problem is being sheltered. I’ll use my own family as an example. Imagine, if you will, a nice spring day. It’s obviously a great time for a walk. And because of my basically nonexistent training, I haven’t learned much of this shit, but hey, my block! I can do that fine, there’s not much you need to know to walk around your block, is there? So off I go, door locked, keychain in pocket, cane in hand, for a nice stroll. Coming back towards my house I’m greeted with screaming. Turns out all six of my family members are worried sick that I “got hit by a car,” or “got lost,” or an infinite number of other scenarios. Sure, they worry because they care, and I’m sure nobody means any harm. But man, when you’re 17 and getting his sort of reaction out of your own family, you ought to be worried sick for your own future.
When will people learn to let go? I’ve spent a lot of time on the internet to seek an answer to this very question. I’ve talked to 40-year-old blind people who literally live in their parents’ basement. They do not cook for themselves; they do not even pick out their own clothes. And it occurs to me that these people are not lazy, and do not deserve pity. They are the way they are because…they are sheltered. Just as I appear to be. When will people learn to let go? Apparently, never.
On the flipside, I’ve talked to 40-year-old blind people who are extraordinary. They are professors and musicians and writers, and programmers and housewives and teachers and any other profession you can think of (including doctors, believe it or not). And I asked quite a few successful people what their childhood was like. I described my siblings and parents and their very protective, sheltered behavior, and was met with responses that essentially amounted to “what the fuck?” Apparently, (really?) what I experience is totally abnormal, especially at 17.
I suppose, before I go any further, I should explain what the hell I’m worried about, if it’s not already obvious. I am TERRIFIED of ending up like the first group of people I talked about. Jobless, completely dependent on others because of a lack of skills. It seems to me that the way I’m going, I’m headed down that path. Yes, a college education is great, and indeed many people in the “first group” have one, but it doesn’t mean shit if you can’t travel to get to job interviews, or even workplaces themselves. It won’t help you to cook, or clean, or do all sorts of essential tasks. For that, you need…”special” training – the stuff I’ve been on about this entire time. There’s this concept from psychology (I think) known as incidental learning – basically, it’s exactly what it sounds like. Watch someone do something, for example, and you have the general idea – you “incidentally” learned. Apparently, (bear with me, my psychology is terrible) this occurs very often in children, but doesn’t work so well for the blind. This is such a problem that there are literally centers you can go to in order to learn independent living, which is where I really ought to be right now. Learning to prepare meals, travel, etc. In fact, I wanted to go before college, so when I actually got here I’d know how to do it all already, and of course have an easier time of it later. Naturally, I brought this up to my family, and was invariably dismissed as “not knowing what the fuck you’re talking about!” and that was that. They say there’s nothing like having a twin – it’s apparently the best thing in the world. The problem is when you use your twin as a sort of crutch. When I asked my family how the hell I was going to navigate a college campus when I barely knew the basics of cane travel, they told me that my twin would “help me out,” as if it were the most natural thing in the world. No! No, no, no; it does not work like that. The real world does not work like that. Apparently, my family doesn’t give a fuck about the real world.
So, here I am, stuck at this campus, not knowing what the fuck to do about this very large problem. Nobody sees reason. It seems to me that the best way to deal with this is to just work through this semester as best as I can, inconveniencing my twin to take me everywhere because I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing…And then what? Do the same shit again next year, because the very obvious solution is to be completely and utterly dependent on your siblings, burdening them with all this responsibility? There must be another way. There HAS to be another way. I just can’t figure out what the fuck it is yet. There’s lots of these training centers, but apparently the best one is in Colorado, which is so far away it’s literally in a different time zone. Given my family and their attitude, I somehow don’t think they’d take too kindly to me going out there for nine months. All I know is, I would rather die than have this madness continue.