Blind Faith

Writer Rob Crossan is gradually losing his sight. Here, he reveals the surprising insights on women and relationships he’s had en route to total blindness

When you’re visually impaired, it’s easy to lose track of just how many sports you’re spectacularly terrible at playing. Football? Embarrassing. Tennis? Execrable. Cricket? Let’s change the subject. But, without a doubt, the activity I was the most incompetent at growing up in northern England was the noble sport of ‘chatting up girls in nightclubs’. Why? Because my eyesight was so bad, I had to rely on my friends to give me descriptions of women before I attempted to talk to them. Then, I’d have to get so close to the girl in order to assess whether I fancied her or not that my technique was more Inuit nose rub than rakish eye flirtation from afar.

Having a disability in your teens and early twenties is like being force-fed a dessert during an all-you-caneat buffet. You’ve already got plates piled high with insecurity, self-doubt and narcissism. But being born with albinism and nystagmus (the ‘dancing eyes’ condition) was, for me, the unwanted cherry on top.

My condition meant that from birth my eyesight has always been appalling. Anything more than roughly 20 inches away was an amorphous, colourful blur. By my early twenties, it was down to 15 inches. Today, two decades on and back on the dating scene, my eyesight in darkened rooms is certified as legally blind. I daren’t cross roads without a friend, or a complete stranger to shadow. And unless we’re so close as to be kissing, I can’t see much of the women I’m meeting for dates. I’m not going to pretend it’s easy. We live in a society where physical attraction is prized; where your scrolling choices on apps are based on looks alone, and where instant chemistry within nanoseconds at a bar is considered vital.