I don't really dig the whole intersectionality identity politics bullshit but I will say this.

The reality for people who have lost sight is that it never really feels like this situation should exist for you, this is something that happens to other people, and you're the special case because oh, you're not a proper blind person, you're the normal person who got unlucky. Of course the reality is everyone feels like that, everyone feels like the outlier, but when you're new that isn't obvious.

I didn't start feeling like I knew what I was doing until more than a decade in, I started interacting with people who had recently lost sight and started recognising things they were doing and saying that I used to do and say, but which I would never dream of doing now. Only when you experience it yourself, then witness someone else going through it, do you really have enough perspective to understand what's going on.

As to identity, work as hard as I can to stop it affecting who I am. I was just barely an adult when I lost my sight so I knew who I was. The thing that is scariest about it for many people who lose sight in late teens or adulthood, and I guess for other disabilities too, is the idea that you have lost the ability to be who you thought you were, to express your own personality. You just have to realise that you can, and that's experience, and try though we might it's really hard to make up for experience with training. It takes as long as it takes and one of the things about mentoring people is that once you take that role, you keep that role, and for as long as it is necessary to do so.

God that's a string of blathering I'm sorry!

Oh man we get one of you guys in here every month or so. Go away.
Also intersectionality is bullshit.

I lost my sight in my mid-teens and I guess it kind of pushed any concerns I had with identity very far away. I was more concerned with dealing with my eyes basically falling appart and focusing on school to even bother with identity.

While my friends were discovering their feminity, having their first crushes, likes and dislikes, hobbies, stuff like that, I was busy just trying to naviguate the world. I feel like a huge late bloomer in that sense.

It took me until my eyesight/health conditions were finally stable (when I was 17/18) to start focusing on that stuff. I had my first crush at 18, found out I was a lesbian, questionned my religion, wondered what I wanted to do with my life, started properly liking things and building a personality right around that age.

I’m barely 20 but I still feel like I’m years behind all of my friends when it comes to that stuff. My sight loss was an obstacle to the self-discovery thing every teen is supposed to do, and it was definitely like a huge pause in my life where I didn’t get to build on my personality and it kind of left me as a blank canvas, at an age where everyone else had already figured at least some stuff out.

Wow, lots to unpack with your post. Let's start with

mirror test: Well I did not automatically know by looking in a mirror that I was there and a separate person from other people I could just tell by my environments. Whether it was swimming alongside others at the public pool or just having dinner with my parents and baby sister I could tell whether I was in a crowd or by myself or how many people were around.

Metaphoric Identity: I am in my late 20s and still largely figuring this out. I know what careers I want to pursue, I have a few groups of friends, but I'm not as social as other people I know, and I am single still living at my mom's home with my sister and brother. Whether I can blame this partially on being blind is questionable since I was a student and am not currently employed.

Gender Identity: I knew instinctively that I was a straight male just because all of the crushes I've had have been on girls for their playful personalities or their voices. I can remember a first crush as early as ten years old or so, but although I've had several close friendships I've never been in a relationship and this I do blame some on my blindness, that no one wants to be in a relationship with someone who requires obvious aid.

Independence in general: I feel fairly independent in that I can sort out laundry, clean spaces, go where I want in the city, cook meals, find everything for research or tv or new books/music online. I know I could be much more independent but I see self-sufficiency as a scale and one just has to judge based on previous months.

I have never even thought about it. I don't plan to start either. I have more important things to do.

What a coincidence, I would like for you to check out this link that I am going to provide for you on my talk show, let me know what you think of it

https://youtu.be/hNn1dSRJxoo

There’s so much to unpack here.

First off, assuming that one must be able to see themselves in order to develop a social identity like everyone else is approaching the situation from a sighted bias. That is, blind people can still touch their own bodies. They know if they’re heavy or thin, have straight hair or curly hair, a big nose or small nose, etc.. Blind people do not exist in a vacuum therefore sighted people around them can describe their attributes to them. They can develop their social identity by internalizing all of the categories that sighted people use to construct their own social identity. The mirror test is more of a cognitive exercise that proves if something is able to recognize itself. Now, because we know humans inherently have the cognitive capacity to do so, the mirror is not necessary. The mirror is simply the tool by which we test the recognition of self and other creatures. Therefore, assuming that a blind person needs a mirror in order to determine that a self exists is silly.

See some other comments for lovely narratives regarding the Intersectionality of being blind and other aspects of their identity. On this topic, I challenge you to question your own underlying assumptions about the role vision plays in the formation of such other identities such as gender. Just because vision is the primary sensory modality used by humans, does not mean the formation of other parts of one’s identity are stunted in anyway. And implicit assumption I get from reading your post is that vision is inherently necessary in the formation of some components of a persons identity which, because there are plenty of blind people with fully formed complex identities, I disagree with. I could totally be way off and misreading your post but that’s just the initial impression I get.

If you ever want to talk more about this stuff, feel free to message me. My undergrad degree is in psych and I’m currently a grad student in psych so I am pretty aware of the sighted bias within psychology lol.

The mirror test is kind of hilariously anthropocentric. We're primates that have a terrible sense of smell and a very specific kind of vision. We make these mirrors that work really well for our vision but which don't replicate smell or anything else and then decide if other species are smart for being able to use our mirrors.

We only had access to mirrors for the last 150 years or so. Really, I don't think mirrors or a visual understanding of yourself is that critical to a development of identity. Yes, we have a modern visual culture that includes selfies and staring at yourself in the mirror and looking at people putting on makeup on YouTube, but I don't think you miss out on much by opting out on that, and many choose to who do not have a visual impairment.

I’m confused, what are you asking?
Are you asking how I know who I am as a person?

I know because of my hobbies or interests and who I am.