It’s been nine years since I clicked ‘publish’ on my very first blog post, a fact that feels quite surreal to write and one that has naturally sent me on my way down memory lane.

I was 16-years-old when I put my first feature out into the world, galvanised by my love of writing and intent on curating the very platform I could have benefited from coming across when I was younger in the hope that someone else could benefit from hearing what I had to say.

Whilst many of those early posts concerned my ever-growing love of beauty and fashion, write-ups about different aspects of my life as a vision impaired person were peppered throughout, encompassing my thoughts and feelings in relation to school and stereotypes whilst also capturing the light-heartedness of what I labelled #BlindGirlProblems.

Last summer, I delivered a talk at a VICTA family weekend where I relayed some of my experiences of growing up as a vision impaired person. Some of the conversations I had with families afterwards centred my blog and the different thoughts and feelings I’ve documented on it over the years with one parent asking if there were any posts from my time at school. Whilst a ‘yes’ confirmed it, my mind was furiously flicking through the memories, wondering ‘oh my goodness, what on earth did my younger self decide to put on the internet back then?’

I have always been reluctant to read through old blog posts because 1) my writing style has changed so much and it would take everything in me to stop myself from going back to edit and impose today’s style on that of Elin of the past and 2) because I was quite nervous to rediscover what my younger self’s take on life as a disabled person was at the time.

But after months of umming and ahing, I finally returned to the archive and whilst I was there, I thought it was only right for me to share some of what I found with you in honour of my nine year blogaversary.

I was right in my assumption that the edit button would be far too tempting at times but I know I’d be doing my younger self a disservice if I caved and altered the thoughts she had at that moment in time.

Most of the posts I penned in the early days of my blogging journey have been pushed into the recesses of my mind so curiosity certainly veiled my reading experience as I revisited those features. It’s not often that you can return to a memory or feeling so authentically so there was something quite powerful in seeing some of mine captured and frozen in time, framed by the beginning and ending of a blog post.

It’s safe to say that my approach to life as a vision impaired person has altered significantly since I started my blog, so let’s take a little look back through the archives and find out how through the lens of the posts I’ve published across the years.

Cue the cringing.

2015: FINDING MY FEET

A slither of hesitation definitely slowed my fingers’ movement over the keyboard as I clicked through my blog’s archive in search of the posts that marked the start of this journey.

What I found when I got there was my burgeoning, teenage voice, trying to create a space in a world where belonging felt so fragile a concept.

Whilst I will always remember some of my first few entries documenting certain elements of my story, I was surprised to find how few and far between posts about life as a disabled person was in that initial year of My Blurred World. Instead, I found countless features catered to the beauty lovers out there based on the time and money I was spending on my own love of makeup at the time.

The pieces that did centre my experiences as a vision impaired person were quite short, a far cry from my posts nowadays, and, in that, I saw a 16/17-year-old trying to find her feet and what she was comfortable in sharing with openness about my experiences having not been something I had practiced much before.

The second post I ever published on here, a feature titled ‘Living with Retinitis Pigmentosa’ refers to details that have since been repeated on here more times than I can count but what struck me most was my younger self’s reference to the mobility lessons she was about to embark on in order to gain more confidence in using the white cane.

Re-reading those words confirmed that I was not only finding my feet in terms of my new online space but also in terms of my pursuit towards more independence.

With my cane having been something I rejected for such a long time, there was something quite striking about seeing that slight shift in attitude captured on here. There have been countless follow-up posts about my journey towards independence and all the feelings that popped up along the way and there’s something really powerful about going back to see where it all started, it definitely serves as a reminder that I’ve come a long way on that front.

2016: ANXIETY

Some of the posts that stood out to me when I revisited my blog’s second year of existence was those I penned about my time in school, and boy was I taken aback by how brutally honest I was in some of those entries.

It’s clear to me from my reading that anxiety was the force that pulled my fingers to the keyboard at this point with multiple posts serving as a chronicle of the worries that permeated the last few months of my time in school.

I pushed those memories aside a long time ago, cordoning them off in a forgotten arena in my mind but clicking on posts such as ’Surviving school as a vision impaired person’ saw me slipping under the tape to see what was on the other side.

I didn’t hold back when it came to addressing my experiences with anxiety and confidence, friendships and some of the barriers I faced at school. It doesn’t seem as though I had any filter and I definitely skirted the line of oversharing, but I know that’s because I didn’t know where else to direct those emotions.

The deterioration I was experiencing at the time is also noted in a few posts from that year, signalling another layer of anxiety.

It’s definitely evident that I had a lot to work through at that point in my life and it seems as though my attitude was ‘write about it’. That, if nothing else, hasn’t changed.

2017: THINKING ABOUT A CURE

When I was touring the archives, I expected and remembered the posts addressing all the misconceptions and stereotypes, I knew I’d written at length about the raw emotions that come with living in a visual world as a vision impaired person. What I wasn’t expecting to find was multiple references to a cure and subtle hints that I was hoping for one.

Considering the fact that I labelled my final couple of years in school as some of the toughest I’d faced in my life at that point, I think it’s only natural that I was consequently thinking that perhaps things would be a little easier if vision impairment wasn’t part of the equation. However, until I reread some of those old posts, I didn’t remember the thought ever being anything more than a fleeting case of wondering.

Clearly, it wasn’t and whilst I don’t think or wonder about a cure nowadays, I definitely don’t want to dilute the fact that my younger self did from time-to-time. The evidence is in posts such as ’My thoughts as a vision impaired person’ where I asked ‘Will I ever have 20/20 vision?’ I referenced it in the first letter I penned to my vision impairment,saying, ‘I hope that one day you can be treated’. There also exists a post titled ‘If I could see clearly’ in which I imagined what life as a non-disabled person would look like, pardon the pun.

It seems as though the concept of treatment weighed heavily on my 18-year-old self’s shoulders and perhaps that was provoked by the fact I was becoming more aware of the barriers that exist in society, something I was learning about having entered the world of work and continuously pursuing more independence.

Whilst there are countless entries on here that lend themselves to the positivity that has always weaved through the tapestry of my life, I definitely wasn’t aware of my rights as a disabled person at the time and the Social Model of Disability was a foreign concept.

I think this meant that I was aware but didn’t fully recognise that I don’t need to be fixed. Whilst I wrote at the time that vision impairment was a part of me and shaped many aspects of my life, it’s clear that I thought that I needed to change in order to feel like I belonged in society, rather than society removing the barriers it was creating which is the view I hold these days.

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2018: APPLYING THE LESSONS
2018 definitely felt like a transformative year for my blog. I will always remember the sense of freedom and creativity I felt that year and I think that is reflected in the sheer variety of posts that I shared.

A sense of reflectiveness is definitely laced throughout the content, especially in posts such as ‘Things I wish I’d known when growing up with sight loss’ and ‘Sight loss and isolation: How I combat loneliness’ to name just a couple.

I vividly remember crafting those posts and feeling completely overwhelmed (in a good way) by the response with people sharing anecdotes from their own lives and expressing how much it helped to hear that they weren’t the only one feeling and experiencing the things I was writing about.

This reflectiveness caused me to look over my shoulder at my younger self to recognise all the things I’d learned from the experiences I had in the years before and, not only taking those lessons as inspiration for new blog posts to hopefully help others but also implementing them into my life offline which helped me to carve out a path to move forward.

Setting time aside to reflect was crucial at that point as it spurred me on to consider what actions I needed to take in order to work through the emotions I was experiencing.

2019: SOMETIMES I DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT MY IMPAIRMENT

My content output started to slow in 2019 and May of that year saw me dedicating a full word count to the fact that I found it quite overwhelming to constantly be talking about life as a disabled person, on and offline.

Whilst my zeal to help others and break down barriers never wavered, I was definitely becoming more aware of when I needed to step back in order to protect my own mental health.

This didn’t stop me from sharing, of course. In fact, some of the posts I’m most proud of were published in 2019 and the years that have followed but recognising the fact that I don’t have to constantly be talking about my life as a disabled person has been incredibly important.

This feeling stemmed more so from my life offline than it did from sharing my experience on my blog. I had control over the content I was putting out into the world but I felt as though it was taken out of my hands when navigating life away from the screen, having always feared that people saw my impairment before they saw me.

I have always been faced with questions or comments about my impairment, from the classic ‘How much can you see?’ to ‘You don’t look vision impaired’.

It felt as though some people thought that the only thing they could talk to me about was my impairment and questions and comments like the above didn’t help matters.

It was clear from the post I wrote at the time that I was tired. Tired of the misconceptions and stereotypes; tired of the societal barriers and tired of feeling like I needed to prove myself and my impairment in order to receive the support and adjustments I’m entitled to.

I can still relate to that feeling.

2020: GRIEF

Grief has been a fixture in my story ever since I first noticed deterioration in my eyesight. I took to writing about it at the tail-end of 2019 before going more in-depth in this post in 2020, also referring to the feeling in my updated letter to Retinitis Pigmentosa in the same year.

Those 2000+ word posts do the feeling far more justice than a short paragraph here can. But what I will say is how I’ve come to recognise the importance of affording myself the space to grieve.

As an eternal optimist, I’ve often felt guilty when feelings of sadness or grief have clouded the positivity that I have always been so intent on pursuing. But I’ve learned that often the most valuable thing I can do for myself is recognise those emotions and find healthy ways of dealing with them rather than continuing with the very unhealthy technique of brushing them under the carpet.

2021: DEALING WITH DETERIORATION

Speaking of dealing with emotions, 2021 saw me penning two posts explaining exactly how I do that when it comes to deterioration.

They’re techniques that I’ve learned and practiced ever since I was a teenager and I still draw on them to this day, maybe even more so.

I think the biggest evolution in terms of my attitude is seen in these kinds of posts and in features such as ‘I’m not the problem, society is the problem’ which went live in 2022. My blog shows the building blocks of my overall approach to living life as a disabled person, some posts conveying a story of when those blocks have crumbled whilst others are evidence of how they’ve been rebuilt and often restructured.

Revisiting the archives has definitely been an experience and if I look past how cringeworthy some posts and points were, I can recognise how special it is to have the trajectory of my story captured on here. I’ve always referred to my blog as an online diary but flicking back through the pages has truly cemented that fact to me. Rereading posts about my first experience of travelling by train independently to my first concert and my feelings at any given time over the past nine years is quite powerful and, as I mentioned earlier, shows me how far I’ve come in so many aspects of my life.

I’ve shared so much on here over the years and the way I communicate my experience has definitely altered with time, especially when it comes to language and how I view disability. Entries from 2021 onwards definitely prove this, leaning more towards focusing on societal barriers and the feelings that come as a direct result of ableism, discrimination and inequality.

With over 250 posts on here, I inevitably skipped quite a few when flicking through the pages so goodness knows what lies within those features, perhaps they’re something to come back to when I have eventually recovered from this trip down memory lane.

It’s definitely evident in the posts that I did brave reading that my attitude towards my vision impairment, the barriers and stereotypes has ebbed and flowed over time which is testament to the tumultuous and unpredictable journey it can be. However, I’d like to think that I have found my feet now, or at least I’m a little steadier than I used to be.

I’d love to know if you can relate to anything I’ve mentioned in this post and if you can recognise a shift in attitude or approach in your own life? I’ve found that no one day, or week, or year, is ever the same in terms of how I feel about being vision impaired, but how I’m addressing those feelings is becoming more consistent. If that changes, I will, of course, be back here to write about it.

Elin x