The Other Part of Me

I had to think long and hard about writing this post.  It's not because it's too personal but I don't really talk about this.  I answer questions when people ask about it, because I don't mind when outright asked, but I don't offer up this information about me often.  It's because, even though I've lived with this all my life, I don't like it.  It is not a part of me that I'm proud of but more of one I tolerate.

I consider this the secondary part of me, and how it works with being a writer.  I've talked about my writer journey and there's a bit on my About Me page, but I think a proper post is in order.  You know the first part - Elizabeth Szubert, the writer.  The poet.  The person who started with writing fanfiction because she needed time to create her own worlds.

Here's the other part of me - legally blind person.  I have retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative eye disease, that is slowly destroying my vision.  I am night blind at night, which is exactly as it sounds, and I have days where it hurts to sit at my computer and write.  It's known as a glare problem.  However, what makes me legally blind is the fact that I only have about 12 degrees of my field vision left which is known as tunnel vision.

Yeah.  To get an idea of how that is, cup your hand around your eye.  It's a lot less than what I have, but that's what it is like.  Since I use a red tipped cane, as a blind person does, that's the first thing you're going to know about me before I even introduce myself.  Truthfully?  I hate it, because I am more than this one thing about me.  However, you will not believe how it parts crowds like the Moses vs the Red Sea sometimes.  Welcome to my mild morbid humor, pull up a chair.  It's only here on good days but that's for another post about writing and mental stability.

However, it makes life as a writer harder.  I don't know what it's like to drive a car or do maintenance on one.  Thank everything for Google because it is the one thing that doesn't care what you ask.  I know that some of my writing is stunted because I don't know what it's like to act as someone with good vision.  It is one of the reasons that I edit as much as I do and ask others for editing help.  I do have other problems with my writing, as all writers do, but the one I'm always worried about if I am portraying someone with normal vision correctly.  I know that someone's going to read this and go "why?" but... it's a quirk of mine.  Everyone has something that they worry about while writing and this is one of mine.

So that's the other part of me.  Maybe I'll open up about it more in the future.  For right now, it's just there.  I hate that sometimes I struggle with writing because of it, but it is what it is.  If I don't laugh, I'll cry.

Readers, what is your struggle?  What seems to define you before you can even say "I'm a writer/author"?  Feel free to comment and, from me to you, a big giant hug.  We're more than the assumptions that people make, all of us, and hearing or writing that makes it more real.