Astrid’s Journal

We now have webspace for the family website. Dad has to configure it but Mum and I are already active in writing pages. We’re probably going to have pages for Mum, Sigrid and me and a page for our cat Morse, where I will write a cat diary for. It’s pretty cool.

I’ve worn my sunglasses the entire week while at the rehab centre (except for Tuesday morning, cause we did wall climbing then) and I feel it’s very comfortable. I didn’t have headaches at all!!! So now I’m wearing my sunglasses most of the time.

Astrid\

I returned from my first week at the rehab centre on Friday. It was very cool and interesting. We
did some introduction, exploration of the centre campus, cooking, wall climbing (very scary!), theatre, a group discussion on blindness/viual impairment,
and a two-day hike sort of. We also had some spare time and chatted together. The hike thing was cool but very tiring. We had to walk 9 km (5,5 miles) with a 20-pound backpack in pretty hot weather (80F I think).
While on our way to the place where we were going to sleep we had to do some assignments. We had to do a lot of teamwork. Many things didn’t work out, but according to the staff the process was more important than the final product. We had a BBQ on Wednesday (the first day of the hike), which was delicious. We also had to sleep in one large room on the floor (well, we had sleep mats of course, but no beds). Better than sleeping in tents, but some folks snorred, boy! The next day we went back to the centre by car, but also
had to do some assignments on our way. We did horseback riding, which is soooo cool!! I only did it a few times, but always on shetland ponies, while this horse was fairly tall.

On Friday, we did an evaluation of the week: first, we discussed the hike and the trouble that happened during one of the assignments (but we had settled it already), and then we did some kind of game. There were nine students, so we were divided in three groups of three people. We got 24 cards with a positive quality on each. Among these qualities, we had to find five qualities for each member of another group of three, so
fifteen in total. For instance, I, Yvonne and Yf (she’s also named Yvonne but we call her Yf for clarity’s sake) were a group and we had to find qualities for the members of another group: Paul, Sytse and Michelle. At first, we had seven qualities for Michelle, five for Sytse and four for Paul,
but cause we had to have five for each we took two from Michelle’s collection and put one at Paul’s. In the end, we sat together with the entire group and discussed the qualities. I got fairly cool ones.
The staff also had written down some things about all of us (some positive things but also some advice/questions). I got two questions to think about (wew!): first, if I was aware of my body posture and how it came across to sightefd folks. Well, simple: yeah, I’m mostly fairly aware of my
posture and what I’m doing with my body, but I’m not so much of its implications. And second, if I (with my already very apparent philosophy of independence and not asking for help) really found that the two of them were contradictory, or if it was possible for someone to be independent while still asking for help. Hmmm, here’s still (after three years!) no simple answer to that.

The other students and staff were all pretty nice folks. Of course, I don’t like everyone extremely, but there’s no-one I really can’t stand. I already look forward to seeing them again on Monday.

Astrid

Bleh, I’m going to rehab tomorrow. Really look up to it. Am so afraid of being the worst at all daily living stuff. That’s usual for rehab and related programmes. I really don’t feel like going to the programme. I’m so scared that I will be the odd girl out. I’m always on rehab and life skills courses, but I’ve not been to rehab or life skills courses since January of 2002… which was in ninth grade… I quit the courses offered by the institute for the blind cause I didn’t want this feeling of inequality among my own community again.
On ICC in 2003, I to some extent had this feeling, but not as seriously as on the course in 2002… I’m sooo afraid I will have this experience again.

Astrid

Wow, I’m reading over the last entry. Am I ever crazy! My parents as far as I know don’t know about the “ladies”.
And they certainly don’t know about this little girl concept. They do know I suspected an ASD last year (not that that’s anything to do with it), and they keep laughing at that.
I can imagine that if they read all this about the “ladeis” and the stuff with vision loss and all at once, they’ll think I just want to have issues.
I mean, I’m quoting Sarah and the books to explain what’s going on; doesn’t that sound as if I just want to be like Sarah or like what the boks say? (Oh yeah, I want to be what the books say, cause most books are fairly positive about blind folks!) They don’t know that I had all this in ninth grade, cause they can’t read what I wrote then
(and if they could, they would think I was crazy!). And
even if they knew what was going on with me in ninth, why should that return in eleventh? Why is it all such a mess inside my mind? Oh no, shut up ladies!
Go back to the end of the universe. You folks listened in May, so why not now? Go away, now! And tke ten sabbatical years to the German end of
the universe! Don’t you f*cked folks dare to come back!

There are several reasons why I don’t want to be obsessed with one issue like I was last year with Asperger’s and me suspecting it. One of them is that I’ll forget all other possiblities and explain everything by that issue. Another, closely related, thing is that if I label myself suspectingly (so if I suspect a certain label but
ain’t officially identified/diagnosed/whatever), I will focus only on the parts of me that are related to the topic. I can remember that I pretty much focussed on and even exaggerated some qualities of
mine when I was involved with the Aspie community. Not for being hypochondriac or wanting to have a disorder, but because I had gone so far in suspecting this disorder.
It’s therefore that I’ve decided to quit labelling myself. If I had a DSM-IV here, I might well be able to find some interesting labels that would explain whatever issue, but I don’t want to. I want to describe the “ladies” as they are - representing thoughts/feelings that contradict inside my
mind, maybe even over-symbolised incertainties -, not according to some standard.

However, I realise that as I’m describing everything as it is, it sometimes seems like I have way too many issues. And for we still have this background of me sort of making up an issue
(well, the issue of not understanding social situations etc. exists, but I was obsessed with a possible
explanation that’s incorrect), I feel I can’t really show what’s really inside my mind, cause it’ll be regarded as just attention-seeking.

Of course, I never validated this opinion - I never asked anyone -, but with the whole ASD stuff the folks were also pretty understanding until they
were allowed to express each others’ perspective to me.

With the Asperger’s issue I wasn’t faking either - it was (and still is) a very genuine problem that I had (as I said on April 11) and I really recognised the symptoms of AS to some extent (and some even a whole lot). I however got sort of stuck in the idea that I may have AS,
and that got me to describe myself as more an Aspie than as me.
That’s why I don’t want to label myself anymore. But also, I’m sometimes afraid there are more things I did “wrogn” with the AS issue, so that it turned into an obsession rather than a genuine feeling.

How on Earth am I going to express my feelings without sounding like a brat that just wants to have issues?!! My parents call me crazy (or “neurotic” or “autistic”, you name it!) whenever I talk about some not-so-normal thing. For example when I told Mum about checking my alarm
clock over and over again till latish night cause I’m afraid it isn’t on. All she said was that I was crazy.
And remember, WHO labelled me far before I started doing so?! It sucks so much. I’m getting judged for trying to understand some issue and in the end getting to believe my parents’ remarks. I don’t want this to happen with the vision loss thing, with the “ladies”, and with all
this stupid stuff that keeps spinning through my mind.
They don’t need to understand, but if my parents or other relatives ever get to read this, please, I don’t care what all you do or don’t with this stuff (the WWW is fairly open, so the entire world can read it anyway, lol) but I hate that careless ridicule.

So, if you don’t want to have a distubred daugther or sister or whatever, pretend not to know or just don’t get to know (ie. stop googling me or reading my diary). You folks can’t change me by just telling me I’m crazy, hypochondriac, overreacting, whatever. Everyone may read my scribblings,
but at their own risk.
Oh well, of course there are those folks that like to tease/bully and if they get to read this they’l certainly find grounds for making fun of me. So be it, but I guess my parents don’t want just to bully me, so then explain to me what’s the point in this satire or quit it.

I was thinking that maybe they do want to understand my feelings, but just want me to quit putting my private life in such an open place like the Internet. Sort of like protecting me from the evil-willing folks that also might read this stuff.
However, I know I have tis risk if I decide to put deeply emotional/psychological stuff online. But what is the point in pretending to be evil-willing to make me aware of that possibility?
Like, of course some folks might want to use my stuff in an abusive way, but I know this risk exists, so why would my ow parents make fun of the stuff I put online? They aren’t evil-willing, are they?
And also, if my parents got to hear some of my behaviour or issues from somebody else of if I told them, their reaction was the same. I ddn’t even have an Internet connection when they first made fun of me for my weird issues. The only difference is that my parents could’ve read my offline diary
then (it wasn’t passworded and a backup was always on the server) and can Google me now. So, besides them, only more folks can read my stuff now. Well, I’ve not had bad reactions except for theirs and some satire from folks at school *which I didn’t care about,
after all they indeed just made fun of the fact I’d for example described some funny eventonline). For instance, my 10th grade Dutch teacher
had read my Dutch, online diary way before my parents had ever googled me. He had read an entry where I described a Dutch class, and all he said was: “Yeah, that was put online, and YOU did that!”
And Frau Z. had found my Dutch, online diary by accident and she laughed at an entry where I’d said that she might be pissed but I didn’t care anyway. Like, that was the real me, she laughingly said.

But what’s the difference between these teachers making fun of what I write and my parents doing it? I think it is cause the teachers who accidentally stumbled upon my diary
just find it funny to see someone they know write stuff online, especially if it’s different from how they know me. On the other hand, my parents seem to have some real meaning with their ridicule:
they did it way before I started writing online, so it comes across as if they just want to get me to quit these issues, which simply they won’t rech by ridiculling me!

Astrid

I thought over my “system”, the labyrinth inside my mind, last night while lying awake. The system has always been composed of almost the same parts (wow, I’m talking about my own mind as if it were a machine!), but there’ve always been slight changes and the terminology has changed pretty much.

It all started in August of 2001 with some simple doubts regarding my attitude towards blindness.
I don’t even know when I started to use the typically ninth-grade term “compensation”, but it must have been somehwhere in the summer of 2001.
This “compensation” referred to the need to make good my blindness in some way. It pretty much referred to not being dependent (hence pretending to be independent) and not needing accommodations.
In seventh, I’d felt the elimination of the effects of blindness was needed, and in eighth I felt this was exaggerated, and I should just be a normal, nice child and not try rigidly to eliminate my “special needs”.
But in the summer of 2001, I started to wonder about this. I don’t remember how it all went exactly, but I do remember once having a talk with Mum about schools, community thigns etc. allowing blind people in.
I wondered why I was allowed to take swimming classes at the “normal” swimming pool, why the preschool and kindergarten and the high school had wanted me. Mum said something about them not having to do much extra for me than for a regular kid.
That evening, I started to wonder: they had to provide textbooks and tests and handouts in accessible formats, they had to verbalise everything they did, I had to do different things during P.E., etc.
Wasn’t that much extra? It was then, August 13, 2001, that I started transcribing my own thoughts as if they were a conversation. An example:
“My thoughts are in doubt, again! But why in doubt? I just shouldn’t nag so much! ‘No,’ says the Astrid that wants to be equal to the sighted, ‘and then you’ll certainly express such matters in extreme curtness*!’ ‘Well,’ says the other Astrid, ‘then you should learn not to be so overreactive.’”
(August 13, 2001)

* On August 8, 2001, I’d created a theory of why I could be so curt when folks tried to be helpful at times, which referred to the being frustrated with my need to compensate for my “special needs”.

As you see, at the time I considered there to be two different viewpoints in my mind, both of which I named just Astrid. On the same day, I first referred to myself in the plural form: at first, these folks where the two halfs of me, but later they became two seperate
Astrids, and they started conversing with each other:
“‘Yeah,’ (my compensating* Astrid), ‘we should finally be normal and, as Mum said one-three-quarter years ago, we shouldn’t be so egoistic.’ ‘But,’ (my Astrid that strives for freedom*), ‘that’s already almost two years ago, when we, although the class accommodated a lot to us, kept being curt
and unfriendly. And also, this curtness could be solved to not be so rigid anymore and try to just be ourselves (8 August 2001).’ I (yeah my ttwo halves) think.” (August 13, 2001)

* This was what I called the part of me that wanted to eliminate the system to compensate for blindness related or other “special needs”.
** I felt I would be sort of free if I didn’t need to eliminate myself and could just be myself.

I introduced the “ladies” in September. Well, that was when I first started calling them “mesdames” (French for “ladies”). They didn’t have the names they have now; I referred to them by their opinions on the topic of “compensation” (and used those in all situation, but I applied
compensation to everything that sucked).

Somehwere in March, I started speaking of the three me’s. They weren’t the same as the “mesdames”. I used these Astrids to rationalise my behaviour: there was one little girl who wanted to be protected and just be secure. But she couldn’t survive cause there was an Astrid who wanted to eliminate
herself totally. But she coulnd’t come outside either, cause there was this girl who didn’t care about the whole thing and was pretty indifferent. She’s pretty much what Brenda is now, except that I had adopted a pretty similar attitude at the time.

From about March of 2002 on, I used this “system”, along with the “mesdames” to describe myself, The three Astrid fought to all get outside, and the
“mesdames” were critics who discussed all happenings inside. During the consecutive three months, I had no idea anymore of how it all started and completely lost track of what was going on. I talked about wanting to eliminate myself, about wanting to be secure and hide away, but neither of them
could come outside cause that stupid, careless, indifferent Astrid was there. So, I did want to be nice etc. etc., but it all sort of hid behind this stupid me-mask.
I kept referring to my blindness and its issues and the word “compensation” remained in use, but it had pretty much lost its original meaning.

I had to get everything clear again in the weeknd of 15 and 16 June, 2002, cause I was going to explain what was wrong with my on the 17th, and I wanted something understandable to come up with. So, I somehow managed to get a logical text of how it went: in the first months (November, I said) I had the feeling of
needing to compensate for my disability, but getting frustrated about that, and then in January I didn’t want to do that anymore and I started to let down my school work and be more curt than I used to be. But I didn’t want to act like this.

After June 17, I worked with and on the ninth grade issue as if it were the very basic, blindness part of it. This was mostly successful - I had realisations about disability, philosophised a whole lot and in November wrote my article
What I Realised, which indicated that I hadn’t yet figured the thigns out about blindness, but that I had some realisations and had to work on finding the right balance in the whole standing up for myself and compensating for my
blindness thing.

In the first half of 2003 (annex second half of tenth grade) I had some issues to deal with again.
We had these social skills things at school and, while I wanted to behave in the “correct” way, I realised this wasn’t just about finding the right balance and about getting this inner fight to get away (which I could do rationally) - it was about understanding situations.
I struggled cause I figured I had difficulties that weren’t normal, and hence I had the issue of suspecting an Autistic Spectrum Disorder.
I still at times had these doubts, but they weren’t as severe as they used to be. I didn’t use the original ninth grade names anymore, but I hadn’t yet “invented” the names as they are now. Basically, it was pretty quiet inside my mind where it came to this.

The whole blindness issue started to play a larger role again in the summer of 2003. I
still also had the issue with suspecting an ASD(basically, in the summer I suspected about half the DSM-IV). But I basically struggled with the weird combination of my abilities (hence intelligence) and difficulties (social, daily living, etc) and its meaning in the light of blindness.
I just had an uquiet mind in general and all sorts of questions kept flying through my head.

Then, somewhere in October or November, I started experiencing about the same feeligns I had had in ninth again. The “ladies” now had names (Carol and Jane) and they were more personified than the original “mesdames”, but the system was further similar. I however didn’twrite about it
till March, cause I felt I had enough issues to deal with and, if I didn’t write about it, it wouldn’t sort of exist. I did write some conversations with the “ladies”, where I had a thought and they sort of reacted to it. Similar to what I did in ninth. But in March it all was so severe. I had
now fully realised that they were parts of me, so it wasn’t as bad as in ninth, but it was still confusing. Then I also “created” Brenda - I didn’t have her inside cause she was one of these three Astrids. Milou didn’t come into existence till later that month, when I was feeling REALLY weird with all these “people” inside. I sent all the three “ladies” on holiday (why should I send Milou? she’s more part of me, the
part that’s bad at life skills etc) last May and for a while didn’t have issues with it. I could even resolve to quit this f*cked “kept from” issue without having a stupid Jane protest (June 1st).

But now… it’s all soo wierd… I’m not having inner fights all the time. Why should I? I didn’t have that allt he time in March, either. Not even in ninth. But sometimes… like when I’m thinking about some deep issue… which I do pretty often… It’s all sooo confusing and sometimes it
seems as if there are contradctions within my mind. As if I’m feeling one thing but feeling something else.

Lastnight, I was thinking about this issue. I was thinking for myself if these muultiple perspectives could perhaps have advantages over just having one me. I thought that on the one hadn it’s causing me to be confused, cause there are contradictions within my mind. But on the other hand, mainly the concept of having this little girl (Milou) inside, helps me understand and deal with some contradictions within my mind (the ones sometimes called “asynchronous
development”). But it sucks cause I can more easily just see Milou as me (which at lesast for now wouldn’t help me) then have Jane and Carol quit fighting and have Brenda away (Brenda’s also more personified than Carol and Jane). I can decide that I’m an intelligent girl who’s bad at whatever other skills and who is emotionally young
etc, and so to speak eliminate Milou as a separate part. But I can’t eliminate Jane and Carol, cause they keep fighting and sometimes my own conscience doesn’t agree with either. And Brenda? Well, I can see her as just part of me, like I can do with Milou - Brenda doesn’t say much either (she
doesn’t care), but then… I don’t know… how this all goes together…

*End of lecture*
Astrid

Why am I writing about the “ladies” again? It’s all complicated. All issues spinnning through my mind. And these folks keep criticising me or protecting me or whatever their perspective. These ladies have their opinions and they make me confused. Like lately with the vision loss stuff. Am I allowed to care about it. Carol says yes, cause I can appreciate the sight I do have. Then Jane says no cause I should be able to do the exact same thing without sight. Huh? I can do the exact same thing without sight, but… Well, she sort if views it as if I’m weak if I have this issue. And Brenda doesn’t care herself so why should I care about the whole issue.

But it’s more complicated. There’s more parts of me inside than the homeowner Astrid and the three roommates that always quarrel. There’s also this little child inside. This girl that doesn’t have an opinion on moral issues or major topics; this girl that just wants to be protected and hide in some place where it’s safe. I guess that’s not too weird a feeling for a teenager. That simple thing of on the one hand wanting to be free (which I share to some extent) but on the other hand not wanting this huge responsibility of adult life. I read an article about this issue for French1. Pretty weird.
But it’s all more difficult… not simply the girl who wants to spend her money on whatever she likes but also wants her parents to pay for all the necessary goods in her life. Not like the girl who wants to go out all night but also wants her parents’ house to be open whenever she wants.
I think it’s more of like an emotionally little child. I don’t mean somebody who’s young emotionally (I’m as a whole). Oh well, I mean a little child in general. Also just emotionally young.
The child who wants to play and read children’s books. But also who wants her parents to just love, understand and support her (hmmm, I was pretty young when I first accused my own parents of not understanding, supporting, loving me).
The child who wants to cry when she’s hurt.
But also a child who wants to be proud of what she accomplishes. The girl who isn’t behind in life skills and O & M. Or if she is doesn’t notice it. (ON my reports poor life skills were noted from a young age on.) The girl who wants to be proud when she learnt the way to the postbox (I did
today). And also, a child who wants to be alllowed to excitedly tell her parents that she knows what colour something is (she’s blind like me). An 8-year-old mind trapped within an 18-year-old’s world.

Sometimes, I would count this child among the “ladies”. I call her Milou. But she has a different status than the “ladies”. She doesn’t fight, she just wants to hide away. She’s more of an alter ego than Carol, Jane and Brenda.
She’s not just me. I mean, I realise that something isn’t right here. That as a whole I may be intelligent, but in all other areas am behind.
But I also need Milou to be me. The “ladies” also represent parts of me, but they’re more like perspectives (althought they have a character, etc.).
Milou is more like an imaginery person. She represents a great part of me, but not the part that thinks deeply, that writes poems, that could describe to some extent what’s going on inside. She’s the person who of course wants to university when she’s big, not the person who plans for university,
where she’ll go in one year.

I’ve tried to describe many issues while using only the three “ladies”. These would be rationalisations of why a certain action is needed. It would be all moralised.
Which is greatly incomplete; sometimes, there are many situations I don’t understand, or that overhwelm me, or I have this “kept from” feeling. This little girl concept wouldn’t explain all of these things, or not completely. However, seeing Milou as some alter ego helps me understand some issues
better, and it brings some order in the chaos of my mind.

Astrid

It’s all a lot like a labyrinth inside my head. The “ladies” have been fighting again.
But I don’t want to symbolise any further. I try to explain what it’s really like. How it feels. These doubts that are however deeper than just normal doubts or incertainties.
Sarah has been describing this feeling very well. But I can’t. It’s almost like having more than one perspective.
But not as in hallucinating and I don’t think like having multiple personalities either.
I mean, I’m always me, Astrid. You always read about these folks that think that they’re somebody else and that forget what they themselves did a while back, cause then they were another person sort of.
That’s not like me. These “ladies” stay inside and they won’t come out unless I write down or speak out their points of view.
I won’t sit somewhere and suddenly think I’m Brenda, or Jane, or Carol (hmmm, I wish I where Carol!).
I may behave like them - like in ninth I had pretty much Brenda’s “never mind” attitude -, but I will always remain Astrid.
It’s much like as I described it in ninth: that my mind was a house and they’d rented a room inside.
I’m sort of the homeowner, the master, and these three folks are merely representatives of a certain perspective.
That’s why I describe it like some sort of doubts, but it’s much deeper than that…

Sometimes, I wonder if it’s just normal teenage incertainty that I’ve symbolised too much. But then I don’t know why it sometimes seems so real…
as I said not as in that I’m somebody else, but as in like having folks inside…
not merely like voices… at least, I mean, I realise it’s all me and
they’re all my own thoughts, but sometimes it seems so as if it’s really like “the others” (the parts of me, the “ladies”)
being there. Oh well, I think this entry makes more sense.
What am I trying to make clear? I don’t know.

Astrid (trying to find her way out of the labyrinth)

Wahoooo!! Dad finally says he’s going to set up our new family website! We’ve never had one, but we’ve had two domains for ages and not used them (except for one of them is something with our server or whatever). My Mom wants to make a site about her fav poetry and her garden etc. and I want to renew my Dutch page. I’m also getting tired of the ads around me English page, but ain’t gonna remove that cause it’s been in the same place forever and it’s in many search engines etc. And also I wanna buy my own domain sometime (and not like in 10 years but really in December or something) so am gonna move my site then. The Dutch page sucks and I would love to have a family page cause then maybe Sigrid and Mom are also gonna have websites. And I’m gonna teach my Mom HTML then.

Oh well, it was a whole issue yesterday cause Dad kept making weird statements that we couldn’t understand and just to seem that we couldn’t do it. Well it requires FTP and I’ve never used that but I can learn it right? So I hope he’s now finally doing it cause he’s said to so often.

Astrid

I had terrible pain in my eyes again last night. At first, I thought now I might go to sleep without pain. But not, cause at around 2:00 AM (yeah I was awake that late) I started having terrible pain again and it continued till I fell asleep at around 5:00. However, when I awoke this morning (or actually afternoon at 12:00) I had no pain at all and till now I have no pain. I however really think it’s just a cold or some irritation or something, cause I sneezed a couple of times today and also my eyes ran again. That still wouldn’t explain why I feel like I see less than a while back, but I think I’m really acting suspiciously, cause I went four-and-a-half years losing some sight and not giving it a second thought. Why can’t I go on like that after March 4?

I had my sunglasses fit today. I went to the optician today with my Dad and we had to wait a little while cause the woman who knew how to make glasses fit was having her lunch break. The folks were really nice. We got a cup of coffee while we were waiting. Meanwhile, Dad showed me the Apple
Computer they had there, described the screensaver (it showed solar systems and planets), told about the meteorological instruments there were and eventually, when he had had enough of the solar systems, concluded that the computer wasn’t password-protected. Lol. The woman took my glasses and
heated them so that they could be curved and better fit me. Now they fit pretty well. And she even did it for free. It’s sooo cool. So Dad’s going to buy a pair of magnifier glasses he wants probably at this optician. When we returned home, Mom was worried cause we’d been away for so long, but everything went right.

I got the info for the rehab program via E-mail, so now I still have the stuff like the list of participants, list of what to bring along etc.

Astrid

I finished chapter 3 of Tuttle’s book. The part on social implications of blindness is sooo good. It tells about issues I have pretty much faced over the last years (and mainly my 11th grade year) and that I actually thought I was the only one who faced it. At least, the only one whose only disability was blindness. I mean, all the articles state that blind people have more difficulty observing others and that negative attitudes about blindness may influence their behaviour, and hence all the issues discussed in this chapter. However, I never met anyone who actually did have these difficulties, so it all remained theory. One could write social skills screening lists that seemed to imply that this was an issue for blind folks (we had one in 10th grade and I hated it cause it made no sense to me). One could also state in all sorts of articles that blind people tend to have such and such difficulty resulting in possible social difficulties. But it remais theory, but this book quotes from (auto)biographies, that ake it seem much more real.

Of course, I still have issues this chapter doesn’t speak of and that I don’t link in any way to blindness. For example, there are a whole lot of situations I don’t understand that I think one can understand without sight (eg. last June I had a talk with Ditha about this topic and one of the situations involved greeting others when entering a group). But the book, and the biographies that are cited, make clear that more blind folks have social deficits beyond the simple thing of not using eye contact.

The second part, on psychological implications, is much more theoretical and I don’t really agree with it. The author pretty much seems to imly that blind folks use their blindness as an excuse for their own flaws, which may of curse be true (wasn’t I doing the exact same in the preceding two paragraphs?), but it seems to state that blind people are inveriably more negative, pessimistic, bitter people. Further, a process of adjusting is discussed briefly: it seems accurate, but the seven phases discussed to me aren’t really stages but may pretty much co-occur, cause one may adjust to one part of one’s blindness at a different time than to another.

However, this author also admits that all blind people are different (in chapter one and repeatedly states so again) just like all sighted people are. Of course, cause the listed social deficits that may result from the difficulty in observing others and from negative attitudes do not occur to all blind people - I’ve encountered many that are actually pretty adept socially.

Anyway, I find the chapter to be pretty good and I love the quotes the author uses as examples of his statements.

Astrid

ps - eyes still hurt a little but they’re also itchy and run, so I may actually have some cold or something like that (the weather’s indeed ideal for it cause it’s changing rapidly).