Disability is a type of impairment, physical or psychological, impacting a person’s everyday life and sometimes becoming an extension of individual’s identity. Disabled people are a marginalized minority with great individual variety, presenting different perspectives on what a life as a disabled person indicates. With the aid of memoirs, journals, case studies etc, we can explore the different implications of coping with a diagnosis of different disabilities. Paramount to our understanding of the two disabilities are the representations created by personal accounts, their accounts also reflect how non disabled people view and engage with disability.

Embracing once disability could be difficult, however,  Ryan Knightly- an English professor diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa- does so by writing about his experience of going blind. Retinitis pigmentosa is a gradual disease that cause tunnel vision that get worse over time. He suggest that going blind is a process and journey, hence he refers to it as “blinding” (259).  For him it wasn’t one instance of turning blind and then directly adjusting to that life. Instead, he describes his denial by going to the club so that his partial blindness could be mistaken for drunkenness, even by himself, “blindness lent an authenticity to my recklessness” (51). Therefore avoiding the social stigma of bumping into people, without any other excuse.  It’s clear that Knighton didn’t want to disclose his illness to his surroundings, possible to avoid the label that comes with being disabled.

Hiding a disability is often done to avoid judgment or assumptions, which is often the case for people with mental disorders. This is apparent in  a case study of people diagnosed with bipolar disorder which is when an individual experience intense changes in mood from euphoria to serious depression.  The researcher, Jacqueline Corcoran quotes a woman’s response to diagnosis, saying that she thought she was “nuts, maniac […] someone that has to be locked up” (163). After being given a label she directly assumed her disability was going to force her into isolation. In other cases Corcoran describe people in denial, they think that the diagnosis is incorrect and/or chose to avoid facing it for many years. Also denying help by throwing out leaflets about the disorder (162).

From the two sources of disability accounts we can assume that the fear of being different is a recurring theme. Both Knighton and the the participants from the case study see need for isolation or avoiding public. So although there is a big difference from an extreme change in mood and not being able to see, they share the feeling of being not normal. With both mental illness and physical disorder comes challenges of acceptance and moving forward. Bipolar disorder will always impact your mental state and a goal is to avoid the symptoms for a richer life. For a person with physical disability, like blindness, there is a larger element of embracement. With accounts like the once mentioned above, people can get a richer understanding, and will therefore change how they engage with people with different types of disability.

Works cited:

Knighton, Ryan. Cockeyed: A Memoir. N.p.: Penguin Group, 2006. Print.

Corcoran, Jacqueline. Living with a Mental Disorder: Insight from qualitative research. Routledge 2017. http://www.tandfebooks.com/doi/view/10.4324/9781315816647