Blind in One Eye: to Share or Not to Share?

One not-unimportant question for a person blind in one eye is: do you share? Do you tell people?

There are pros and cons to each. The pros to telling people is that it might help explain times when your lack of eyesight is a problem: when you don’t see a person who waves at you from your blind side or when you say no to a pick-up game of baseball.

The biggest con is that people may treat you more like you’re disabled. They may not trust you as much when you drive (even though monocular people can be perfectly good drivers), they may treat you with sympathy or pity when you want to be treated normal, or, in the worst of situations, they may intentionally or unintentionally say something insulting or hurtful.

How you feel about any of these things depends on your personality.

I’ve gone through stretches when several people knew about my eye and stretches when no one knew, and based on those experiences, I’m inclined not to tell people. It does mean that I have to deal with the downsides to not telling, but I’ve personally found the downsides to telling a lot more annoying. I’ve had people toss me objects to see if I can catch it and I’ve had people ask me well-intentioned but frustrating question. I even had a person try to be funny by calling me “Deadeye,” as in a cowboy. I know that person wasn’t trying to be mean, but it was not the only example of a misplaced or tone-deaf comment.

So, for me at least, I tend not to talk about it, or if I have to, not to make much of it.

What about you? Share or not? Let me know in the comments.

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