I hid my impairment until the pandemic and I must say I hid it well. My parents did not explain my impairment to me, and did not do much to assist me. They let me talk to my teachers about my necessities. I could not read the board and when my teachers did not accomodate that, I had no where else to turn, so I faked it.

I told a boss about my vision in my early twenties and they treated me unfairly and they looked down on me constantly. I quit and continued to hide it.

Now, I am trying to be more open. There is no reason to feel unsafe or mistreated. With the help of therapy, I realize that it's not a FAULT, it's just my reality. All those people in my past that were mean to me were just assholes. It wasn't MY fault or MY problem.

If you want to chat, I'd love to chat with you about your experience! I feel so much better now, although I am still dealing with a lot regarding my vision.

I’ve had a very similar experience to you growing up. Of course I have/had a supportive family but I didn’t have a community. I didn’t grow up around a supportive system that understood my complicated relationship and feelings with my disability I have no one to talk to it about who really gets it. Honestly I still struggle with not hiding it and being open about it. It can be really overwhelming sometimes dealing with things on your own. I’ve been wearing contacts since I was 12 so it got even easier to hide it and you best believe it was the happiest day of my life when I got them. You have no idea how much I relate to this post lol

in hindsight this was dumb to do, but in school my mom always made sure i had large print books and large print tests and monoculars and all kinds of assistive things and i would refuse to use them out of embarrassment. i would do my best to hide the fact that teachers were giving me copies of notes and would avoid asking for help. people already made fun of me enough for my googly eye and how my center of vision is off, i didn't want to feel even more singled out. now that i'm older it's much different and i have no problem asking for help or using available resources.

I felt a very similar way. I have always tried to fake I was normal until I really needed assistance with something. But I didn’t learn how to advocated for myself until college so most of my childhood was spent just trying to blend in.

Omg this sounds like me. I felt the exact same way. I think part of it was because I never really knew how to explain it. I was never given the label low vision, legally blind or even visually impairerd until recently (probably because my vision was fairly good as a child) so it was like i wear glasses but i still cant see? I didnt think anyone would understand since I didnt fully understand it myself. I felt like a total outsider, like the only one who had this problem and it was really depressing. I have 5 siblings and 4 of them need glasses but still have nomal vision. Im the only one who has RP and has all the other issues like night blindness. I wish I knew visually impaierd people growing up. It wouldve helped a lot.

My vision got worse right before high school and that is when it started to affect my grades. I still refused to tell anyone, not even my parernts what was going on. I felt ashamed for having RP and scared of my fate at the same time. But hiding it is the wrong thing to do because i know now that if I wouldve spoken up I wouldve gotten so much help and saved myself from countless embarrassin moments in gym class. XD

I wasn't able to hide it (also legally blind then low vision then back to legally blind) as I got my first monocular in third grade. Coincidentally that was when the bullying started. I downplayed it as much as I could, particularly as the few times I spoke up about it in high school I got massive backlash from teachers. I wasn't worried people would think I was stupid - I'd been getting called a freak (among other things) since I was 7 and didn't want to give them more ammo.

When I was about 16 I got my first cane as I was becoming more independent. Didn't use it at school, but my small friend group thought it was great in the city because the crowd would part for me and they could follow behind without getting bumped into.

In my case it was even worse. I grew up with 10% of acuity, but since I had no other issues like impaired contrast perception or night vision, I could live a fairly normal life, with the only noticeable limitation being my inability to read from the black board even from the front row, and later my inability to legally drive. Due to these conditions, neither I nor the people around me thought that my vision was that bad, and in fact even today when I tell people who have known me for my entire life that my visual acuity has never been greater than 10% they think I'm lying until I show them old medical reports. I only became aware that my vision was really really bad when I became independent and started attending medical appointments by myself.

I've never felt like I was at a disadvantage for having such a bad eye sight, and don't recall ever being treated differently because of it until I went totally blind. My vision problems were never a secret to anyone, but since those conditions didn't prevent me from powering through life, I guess that people simply thought that they weren't that bad.

Yes. I originally only needed glasses for reading. Didn't wear them out of fear of being picked on, so by high-school I needed them 24/7. They started deteriorate again 2 years ago and hid it for years and now I'm legally blind with a rare/hard to treat eye disease.