By Emily Zitek

(Editor’s Note:  Emily is a former office manager at Blindness: Learning in New Dimensions (BLIND), and now operates her own vending business in St. Paul as part of the Business Enterprises Program.  She is an active member of our Metro Chapter.)

The stories of students going through adjustment-to-blindness training are very different, but most of their stories have similarities.  My story prior to training was common among others I've heard over the years.  Some of the students I taught have been blind all their lives and have lived a sheltered life that allowed them to depend on Mom or Dad or their spouse.  Others just recently went blind, and as a result, they felt that there was no hope of continuing life as it had been.  No matter what their stories, the result is always the same — they see a light at the end of the dark tunnel of a life of dependence on others and somehow become introduced to the NFB.  Subsequently, they make the decision to get adjustment-to-blindness training once they realize that this is their ticket to independence.  Six to nine months later, they graduate from training, ring their Freedom bell, and say, "I did it!  Now I'm independent!  Now I'm free to live a normal life!”  After all this effort of hard work, meeting countless goals and experiencing weeks and weeks of challenges, you as a student feel like you've earned this independence.  But is it really enough?

I began pondering this question early in the year 2000 after living in Minnesota for almost four years.  I had attended the Louisiana Center for the Blind in the early ‘90s, and like most students going through training, I had thought I was destined to a life of depending on my family until my training began.  I was feeling really good about my skills and the accomplishments I had made since moving away from home.  I could cook, clean, travel decently, use the computer — heck, I had even moved all the way across the country.  I figured if that didn't define my independence, then what would?

Today, people still ask about the reasons I moved so far away from my home in Louisiana.  All the reasons I provide are indeed true — that the transportation and job opportunities are better for me here.  But the main reason I moved here at age 18 was for, take a guess, a guy.  His motives for getting me to move here were good, and to this day, I still am thankful to him because of the fact that I wouldn't be here and the successful person I am today if he hadn't been a factor in this situation.

One of the stipulations my family had on this guy before I moved was that he would call them if things weren't working out for us in Minnesota.  And I counted on this agreement so heavily that I convinced myself that this guy — I'll call him Jake — would never leave me and would always take care of me.  As long as he was by my side and supported me emotionally, I had it made.  My skills would carry me through all the rest.  But God forbid that he would ever leave me deserted in Minnesota with no one else to depend on.

Life was great for Jake and me, up until the tail end of 1999 when I took my yearly trip to visit my family in Louisiana for Christmas.  Everything seemed fine in our relationship when I left for my vacation, or so I thought.  In fact, the night I arrived in Louisiana, Jake and I had a quite pleasant phone conversation.  But as the week progressed, I began having a gut instinct that something was going wrong.  There were a few times when I called the apartment and Jake wasn't there, and whenever we did talk, he seemed cool and distant.  When I arrived home just before the first of the new millennium, I was stunned to learn that Jake no longer wanted to continue dating me, and I felt like my perfect little world had crashed in on me.  This was when I began asking myself if the skills I had acquired in adjustment-to-blindness training would be enough to carry me through this crisis.  Sure, I had the skills necessary to find my own apartment, shop for new furniture, meet a new group of friends, etc., but I had no clue how I would handle my own well-being and live alone once Jake was out of my life.  With his emotional support, I had always felt as though I could conquer the world, but without it, I felt like I couldn't function.  In fact, I had even considered moving back to Louisiana.  But what would that prove to me?  What would that say about my self-confidence?

Weeks later, after deciding that Jake probably wouldn't come back, I found my own place and settled into a new life with the minimal help of other people, and I started going out and meeting new friends.  I was just starting to realize how nice it was to be on my own when Jake came knocking on my door, asking to come back.  Of course, since I was still deeply in love with him, I gave him another chance, but things were never quite the same.  Within weeks after getting back together with him, I began to realize that I no longer needed him in the same way that had allowed me to fall in love with him.  I was ready to conquer the world on my own and didn't need to rely on him for support.  In my time of crisis in early 2000, I vowed to myself that I would think twice before depending on one other person — no matter in which way — for anything.

I've been married now for almost nine years, but I've developed a new attitude.  Some readers might think it's an unhealthy attitude, but this is why I've become a strong-willed, self-confident person.  This also goes for depending on others for accomplishing concrete tasks.  The routine at my house is that I take care of the inside of the house, and my husband does the yard work and other outdoor chores.  There will always be tasks at which I am not as efficient as I expect, such as mowing the lawn or painting the living room.  But I've always been adamant about learning as much as possible about how I would deal with getting these tasks done if my husband isn't around tomorrow.

I learned the hard way that this is a tough world.  The one you love and depend on so much could die tomorrow.  They might wake up tomorrow and decide that you're not the one they want to be with forever.  Your parents definitely aren't getting any younger, and someday they will need to depend on you.  Even after you think you have all the skills you need to lead a successful, independent life, just remember this: you can only rely on yourself for any kind of support in the end.  If you think you have it made by depending on others, there will come a time when reality will strike and you realize that you need to wake up and smell the coffee.

It isn't rare that people go through training and then go back home to live exactly the way they did before training — with Mom and Dad or a relative.  Those people won't be around forever, so it's up to you as to how you want to take care of you.  By depending on someone else, you're allowing yourself to be given the fish.  By going through an NFB training center, you're being taught how to go out and catch your own fish.

So always have your fishing pole out there, because you need to eat every day, and you'll never run out of food if for some reason, one morning, you realize that there is no one to rely on but yourself.