Nervous terror!?

I was at my monthly “low vision support group” meeting today.  We had a speaker who spoke about “mobility training” and its importance.  (For those not visually disabled, mobility training is learning how to use a white cane, how to navigate the public transit system, and basically how to get from point A to point B without anyone else’s help but just all the resources and training you have learned.)  The gal shared her story and it continues to amaze me how when someone else shares what it is like for them navigating through visual disability that I start to feel less alone on this journey.  She shared something today that so resonated with my experience that it was freeing in a lot of ways.  She was talking about how whenever she has to go somewhere new that she has a lot of anxiety and gets butterflies in her stomach.  Do you have any idea what it is like to have this sensation on a regular basis (like daily, sometimes hourly)? It is a constant for me right now.

 Here I had been thinking there was something profoundly wrong with me in the fact that every “new” trip causes me an enormous amount of anxiety. Both my kids started new school these last two weeks and I have had to “learn” their traffic flow, the volume of traffic, where to pick up and drop off kids, what streets to turn on, and all the while with reduced vision.  I literally have been coming home feeling like I have just run the track for an hour.  I am overheated, a little nauseated, and completely exhausted. It makes me cranky.  I have been successful, in that I am slowly learning my new routes, and all the nuances of them without incident, but I am not past the fear just yet.

I have to get to places now with lots of time to spare so I can “relearn” with all my other senses, what I used to be able to do by sight alone.  The gal today shared how she had communicated she wanted to get to an event early, so she could figure out the lay of the land and then when they arrived late she described how I have felt in similar situations. In the height of an event there are so many competing noises, sensations, and obstacles that it is really hard to get one’s bearings. What sighted folks don’t understand is that by trying to dictate to us what our surroundings are doesn’t help as much as “feeling” it for ourselves during a quieter time than peak activity. Just as yelling at a foreigner isn’t going to make them understand our language any better; dictating orally what my environment looks like to you doesn’t help me “understand” my surroundings.  I have had the sighted get frustrated with me and until I can hear, touch, and use my other senses to explore my environment, I will never understand dictated directions.  And just like a foreign language, being visually disabled takes time and practice.  Please do not assume you know my needs when it comes to a new environment, it takes what it takes for me to learn it and I don’t need the added stress of your frustration.  You have no idea how frustrating this new world I live in is.  I am just glad that those who have gone before me totally get how this new world feels to me.