The Adventures of the Blind/Low Vision/Visually Impaired (BLOVI) Girl- Volume 78: Seeker, Explorer, Quicksand Avoider
I am a risk taker, a woman with tons of questions, a processor, a pusher of boundaries, a moving forward type of gal. And that may not be expected, given my disability. I am learning that the chaos and crazy in my life, which I did not cause, nor can control, may be because of this. I am shamelessly borrowing this analogy from my therapist; that me as explorer, as seeker means I get into dangerous places that may have slippery slopes or quicksand. My job is to quickly figure out how to get out of it or to go around it and that is the focus of the blog. But firs……………………..
My WTF of the week is the resistance that has developed to doing my work of writing the book proposal for my book, which has a working title of EnLIGHTtened: How Losing My Sight Gave me Vision. Every time I go to write the proposal I get stuck or just sit there looking at the few outlines for the format and avoid sections I don’t feel like addressing, which in the end is the entirety of the proposal. So far I have written about a page of what should be a proposal of 30 to 40 pages and I have been “working" on this for 2 weeks. I went back to the book The War of Art which does a great job at discussing resistance and tried to figure out why it is occurring (boredom, fear of success fear of failure, etc.). And what I figured out is that writing a proposal is structured and tedious and not at all what I want to be writing. Nonetheless, I have rededicated myself to this proposal process because I am giving myself a reward when that and the query letter to literary agents is finished- a trip to NYC and maybe an I Pad.
This week I can’t get enough of the fact I have booked my first post-accident flight to NYC where I will spend my 45th b-day with my partner in crime as I call her to visit my bestest male friend (BMF) ever. . This is my first trip flying blind, so to speak, but since I am flying with a friend I could get no special assistance, because I asked. They also could not fill my request for making sure a good looking guy was sitting in our row, between us. I am staying with my newly relocated to the big apple BMF who recently said a great thing to me. I asked, when you move in with he who will not be named in this blog will we still be able to talk like we do. He said: Beth I would never let a man come between us. I am also wearing his great-grandmothers diamond ring because he did not want to take it to NYC and I offered to provide a good and stable home for any and all jewelry. He was not sure it was real but today I confirmed that it is. When I texted him that the ring was real and according to the jeweler, a nice gift, he said I told you I would give you a diamond ring one day. And now he will be living the fabulous single, no kids’ life in the big city that I secretly dreamed about living and I am a little jealous. But I plan to show up in NYC as often as they will let me crash at their place and I will bring a fabulous host gift, and maybe a friend or two.
March was a chaotic month (truly March madness) and this one has started off with a bang, and a crash and a burn and they are not happy accidents, they are train wrecks. The wrecks are over legal matters, relationships, friendships, parenting, home repairs, etc. etc. etc. I am left wondering, did I cause these, what was my role, or is it all just coincidence. Sure, I would like to think the latter, but this is a recurring theme and a theme means a pattern and a pattern means you are somehow accountable. Recently I have been accused of and called many contradictory things; insecure, needy, too independent, not knowing how to ask for help, asking for too much help, running my mouth, not disclosing enough, vacillating, not giving people the benefit of the doubt, and letting people take advantage of me. My all-time favorite and admittedly at times true statement is that I am not being a very good blind person. How can I be all these things and if I am all these things did I cause this entire sh*t storm.
What I know to be true is that I am some of those things some of the time and others none of the time, but what I am all of the time is the seeker and explorer, out there pushing limits, risk taking and turning over new ground and new leaves. And when you are an explore you are sometimes in unchartered water or territory and given I am visually impaired these are literally and figuratively hard to navigate. One situation that arose that I will just call a Baha’i Backdraft arose because of the lack of knowledge of a new territory.
When you are an explorer you must have gear and especially things that protect your head, but also your heart. From objects being hurled at you by your raging child or crap dropped on you by the douchebag of the day. In my book I describe my approach to relationships as jumping off a cliff and forgetting to put on the parachute realizing that device would have been useful halfway down, mostly to soften the impact. I found a parachute this last go round and I already have other tools for exploring and some I figure out I need while in the midst of the exploration.
When seeking and exploring you come upon dangerous obstacles, some which are obvious and others which are not. The quicksand, which looks like any other sand, is especially dangerous because you are in it unprepared and all you can do is react in the moment. Once you hit the quicksand you just do what I always tell people to do, do not struggle and let go. If you relax completely and move slowly it will let you go unharmed. Some people are quicksand, they draw you in and it is not until you are being sucked down that you realize soon you won’t be able to breathe. Other obstacles are more obvious once you get close to them so you can problem solve and grab the tools in your tool bag to scale the wall or cross the stream or handle whatever is in front of you. In a situation with me ex-husband I am now backed up against a wall and will be using tools to get around it or knock it down.
So me, as seeker and explorer cannot help but come upon danger and chaos, it is inevitably unavoidable and in the final analysis, without it life would be uninteresting. I feel comfortable in this role but I am learning that it makes others uncomfortable, especially since my accident because a visually impaired person, even one who is passing, should not be acting this way. Hence the myriad manes and labels placed upon me as a push forward kind of woman, armed with sling blade, parachute and assorted ax grinding tools. Deal with it, because I can, and I am not changing strategy or tactic.
Keep Moving Forward,
Beth (BLOVI) Medlock
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