Jewel has Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID), a condition
in which able-bodied people believe they are meant to be
disabled.
Her need to lose her sight was so strong that in 2006 she
decided to blind herself – by having a sympathetic
psychologist pour DRAIN CLEANER into her eyes.
According to Jewel, her fascination with blindness began
early in childhood.
She said:
“When I was young my mother would find me walking
in the halls at night, when I was three or four years
old.By the time I was six I remember that thinking
about being blind made me feel comfortable.”
As a child she would spend hours staring at the sun,
watching sunspots and solar storms, after her mother told
her it would damage her eyes.In her teens she started
wearing thick black sunglasses, getting her first white cane
aged 18 and becoming fully fluent in braille by the age of 20.
Jewel said:
“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.”
Determined to make her dream a reality, Jewel found a
psychologist willing to help her become blind – an act which
she compares to a deaf person wanting to get a cochlear
implant.
The psychologist put in numbing eyedrops – acquired by
Jewel during a special visit to Canada – and then a couple of
drops of drain cleaner in each eye.
Jewel said:
“It hurt, let me tell you. 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.”
Despite the hospital’s attempts to save her vision – against
her wishes – they were permanently damaged, although it
took around half a year for the damage to take affect.
Jewel, 30, from North Carolina, said:
“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.”
But over around six months the sight in both her eyes slowly
went away. Her left eye suffered a ‘corneal meltdown’ –
collapsing in on itself and requiring the eye to be removed –
while her right eye had glaucoma and cataracts, as well as a
webbing of scars.
Jewel originally told her family it had been an accident, but
they eventually found out the truth – causing both her
mother and sister to cut contact.
However, she has been supported by her former fiancé
Mike, 50, who is registered legally blind – although in his
case due to naturally occurring early-onset macular
degeneration.
The only thing I would want to see again is my dad’s
face, although sadly that’s not possible as he’s no
longer with us.
“I really feel this is the way I was supposed to be born,
that I should have been blind from birth.
“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.”
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