While there is still more work to do this evening, I am taking a break from it all to say I am going blind.
I do not say this hyperbolically, or that blindness is a metaphor. Blindness is the truth. When I was seven or so, I asked my mother to take me to the optometrist because I was certain I needed glasses. Of course, I was lying. I wasn't at all certain; I just wanted the same accessory as my cousin.
E was born three days after me, and we grew up in comparison. I wanted what she had, and though I wish I could earnestly say the reversal was true, I don't believe it was. I was always more jealous of her than she was of me, and the reasons go beyond her having glasses before I did. However, I will stick to this one detail for the time being.
My mother was suspicious of the timing of my request, considering that when I began asking, it was only a few days after E sported her new frames at the Sunday family gathering. As any cautious mother would, in case my jealousy so happened to be legitimate, she took me to the optometrist, where I admittedly fudged the legibility of the letters on the wall ahead of me. Chaperoning me back to my mother, who sat annoyed in the waiting room for what she believed to be a useless appointment, the doctor broke the news to her that I did, in fact, need glasses. Need. She was always intelligent, my mother, and she knew what I had done. After all, she was the one who raised me to be so highly motivated.
Together, we picked out my boyish frames in the lobby of the eye clinic, and in a week's time, my jealousy was alleviated.
My father still reminds me that I have my mother's eyes, despite having his exact, uniquely blue-green iris. What he means by this is that I am as blind as she was when she was alive. Perhaps I was premature in my trip to the optometrist, but I do believe it would have been inevitable. My eyesight has considerably worsened over time, especially after I was diagnosed with diabetes at age fourteen. As I get older, my eyes seem to age ahead of me, which my endocrinologist credits to diabetic neuropathy and the degeneration of my optic nerve.
Each visit to the eye doctor is a simultaneous breaking of the news that my eyesight has abnormally weakened, dumbfounding each doctor and eliciting a familiar worried tone in their voice. The strengthening of my prescription has thickened my lenses, effectively making them absurdly expensive. Because of this, I drag my feet in my efforts to schedule a follow-up, knowing that my eyes will inevitably become more costly.
Since starting graduate school, in a MFA program for writing no less, where I sit on my laptop for hours each day, either writing across a white screen or reading PDFs, I have noticed a decline in the clarity of my eyesight and an increase in optic strain. Due to this surmounting haziness on and around what I am able to see, the brightness of my computer screen must be high, and because of this luminescence, my eyes feel fried.
Once I moved to New York and established care with an endocrinologist, she suggested that I see an ophthalmologist, an appointment I have yet to make. I already know that I am slowly going blind, and I prefer to not be reminded. At my last optometry appointment, the doctor informed me that it was only a matter of time before I had to add reading glasses to my already existing daily pair.
In an attempt to make their job easier, I inform each optometrist I see that the Snellen chart will not be necessary, for I cannot see the big E, that my vision acuity is hardly existent. They each then always opt for holding up their fingers, asking me if I am able to see how many are being held up. As of now, I can still distinguish between one blurry column and another.
I have been looking into blue-light glasses in hopes that this will alleviate the daily strain on my eyes, but according to a few Reddit threads, these are hardly effective. This would be a good time to suggest to me that I consult a medical professional instead of the anonymous opinions of online nobodies. I promise... I am getting to it.
Anyway, I know that it is not impossible that I will one day stop seeing. While I may not be shut into complete darkness and might still be able to distinguish between night and day, it is possible that I will not be able to read the words in front of me, which will ultimately frustrate me since I have terrible auditory processing and rely on visualizations and imagery to learn. This is to say: I cannot stand an audiobook, and yes, words are images.
If I become blind and unable to read, I may continue to write, using an assistant to make it readable and to edit the typos I cannot seem to see. However, my plan is to take up a practice of interpretive dance, experimental performance, and become an expert on sound. I already think a lot about it, so I imagine if sound is all I have of the world beyond smells, textures, and flavors, I will have a great deal to say on the topic.
Until then, I will keep looking at what is so barely there—here. I mean here.
b.b.