Everybody, please meet Jewel Shuping. This 30-year-old woman from North Carolina has had a lifelong dream to be blind. Not blind to the travesties of humanity or blind to the dirty pans soaking in the sink. She literally wanted to lose her God-given gift of sight.
Shuping’s fascination with becoming blind began when she was a child. “My mother would find me walking in the halls at night, when I was three or four years old,” she said. “By the time I was six I remember that thinking about being blind made me feel comfortable.”
When her mother told her that staring at the sun would damage her eyes, it only encouraged Shuping to purposely spend hours gazing directly at the sun.
When she was a teenager she started wearing thick black sunglasses and got her first white cane. By the time she was 20-years-old, she became fully fluent in braille.
#BlindGoals
“I was ‘blind-simming,’ which is pretending to be blind, but the idea kept coming up in my head and by the time I was 21 it was a non-stop alarm that was going off,” she said.
Finally in 2006, she had had enough of those pesky eyes giving her the remarkable ability to see. So she had her psychologist pour drain cleaner into her eyes. They first put in numbing eye drops, followed by a couple of drops of drain cleaner in each eye. Sounds really sketchy on the psychologist’s part.
“My eyes were screaming and I had some drain cleaner going down my cheek burning my skin. But all I could think was ‘I am going blind, it is going to be okay.'”
Medics at a hospital tried to save her vision, against her wishes, but they were permanently damaged. “When I woke up the following day I was joyful, until I turned on to my back and opened my eyes – I was so enraged when I saw the TV screen.” I guess Keeping Up With Kardashians was on the television, I get the same fury.
Her left eye suffered a corneal meltdown, collapsing in on itself and requiring the eye to be removed. Her right eye had glaucoma and cataracts, and a webbing of scars.
Six months later, she was completely blind.
Mission accomplished!
Her family has disowned her, but her former fiancé Mike supports her. He is legally blind, but he did it the old fashioned way with shitty luck and not chemicals.
“I really feel this is the way I was supposed to be born, that I should have been blind from birth,” says Shuping. “When there’s nobody around you who feels the same way, you start to think that you’re crazy. But I don’t think I’m crazy, I just have a disorder.” Shuping has been diagnosed with Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID). BIID is a psychological disorder where people feel they would be happier living as a disabled person.
“People with BIID get trains to run over their legs, freeze dry their legs, or fall off cliffs to try to paralyze themselves,” Shuping says.
Apparently, this woman loves everything about being blind, and even RT’d a Twitter account called “How To Be Blind.”
Blinds 2go is now following me on #Twitter!
Welcome! http://t.co/EyEkLjlvF6.
— Jewel Shuping (@JewelisGoofy) June 20, 2015
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http://t.co/bEVbWj5rui is now following me on #Twitter!
Welcome! http://t.co/z8ZizKQxwJ.
— Jewel Shuping (@JewelisGoofy) November 26, 2014
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Is she crazy? If you think so then maybe you got a fucking problem bro, and need to have your eyesight privilege checked. See you probably can’t spot or don’t understand the struggles of someone who despises being able to see things like the the sunrise, the ocean or a mirror. And before you even say she’s a “blind woman,” she is a trans-sightless individual. Have a little sensitivity goddammit!