Each day I wonder afresh how to keep my dignity. Blind, walking, the stares of generally everyone I meet are omnipresent. Every disabled person knows this story. Sometimes I can repress my feelings about the “display” and other times I feel weary and let my emotions arise. Yesterday I said hello to a new student in the honors program I direct at Syracuse University. I am blind, and don’t make good eye contact. I looked right at her, said “hello” and she looked past me. I said “hello” again. She looked past me. Then I said: “I’m the director of the honors program, I’m blind, and I’m saying hello to you.” “Oh,” she said, and stuck out her hand.
One can say as Eleanor Roosevelt once said—no one can make you feel bad about yourself without your permission. I think that’s what she said. But disability is a social signifier larger than the self—you belong to a caste when you present with a wheelchair or weak, googley eyes. People will look past you. They’ve made a judgement. And so one does have to wonder afresh how to keep one’s dignity. I think of this as my daily chewing.
I often think of the moon as searching for its lost possessions, its silver spoons and icicles. Disability is, in social spaces, more than a little like the life of the moon.
Planet of the Blind 