Many people ask me the question: “What is it like being blind?”

There’s not one straight answer. But now whenever someone asks, I’ll refer them to this article.

I have been blind since I was six when a brain tumor crushed my optic nerves. I was fully sighted before this incident.

Afterwards, my vision became a cloudy curtain of fog. As the hysteria of the surgery faded into a painful memory, I began to realize what I was in for.  

I didn’t know what to do! I was six years old when my whole world crashed. I was scared and felt as if I was constantly spinning.

As time went on, I learned how to read Braille, and I despised it with every fiber in my being. I did not want to learn Braille, use a cane, order for myself at restaurants or learn how to navigate cities by myself. I was eight years old when all of this preparation for my independence was happening and I was angry. I just wanted to learn cursive and read print books like my other Arizona classmates.

But I adapted, and as the years went on, I moved to New Hampshire and met other blind people like myself. It was amazing, but also I was still kind of angry, too. Why did it take me until I was a teenager to finally have blind friends?

I’m no longer upset that I’ve had to learn Braille or use a cane because I work harder than everyone else and have learned to persevere.

This is what it is like to be blind.

I deal with doctors telling me that my vision is getting worse, or that it is the same. I deal with people looking at me strangely for walking with a cane. In some cases, people kick my cane from my hands. I don’t only deal with this nonsense on a daily basis but I still try to be a good person through it all.

I work my butt off, twice as hard as most people, but from this hard work, there comes a sense of knowing that I can do things as well as  or better than any sighted person. If you don’t believe me, just come visit Camp Interactions in Kingston, N.H. one summer. Here, you’ll see what a bunch of blind kids can do!