I have been blind in my right eye since I was three-years old. This is a narrative of my unexpected loss of vision in my left eye two months before my thirteenth birthday and only two weeks before my freshman year of high school was to begin. I wrote this in 1989 (when I was sixteen years old). 

It is just like any other Friday night. My family - Mom, Dad, brother and I - sit watching television together. Mom leaves the room because of some "disgusting" or "immodest" behavior on the program we have chosen. But before she leaves, she gives me an expectant, slightly reproachful look that says, "I know you want to leave too, Honey, don't you?" I stare hard at the television and scrunch back into my soft seat, silently replying, "No," and "If Jay (my big brother) can watch it so can I." I look over at my stepdad; his beautiful gray-white hair which he has possessed since the age of twenty, seems to glow as it shows just above his newspaper. I recall how much I have always loved his hair. As the evening moves further on, Dad joins Mom, and Jay and I are left. Jay looks at me with those blue eyes I have always wished I would have inherited and flips to Miami Vice. I hold back my objections to this program that I find rather stupid, since I want him to like me and think I'm "cool."

As I watch unshaven Don Johnson walk down the beach, I am reminded of my visits to Hawaii and the Caribbean. I had seen the black sand beaches of Hawaii. I saw my first double rainbow there. I had seen the crystal blue waters of the Caribbean. I saw the dark faces and vulnerable, shining smiles of the native people. I had seen the beauty and the unique lifestyles of both of these worlds.

Mom comes back about halfway through our show to say good night. Her familiar, worn blue robe plays at her ankles as she hugs first my brother and then me. Looking at her as the light from the television hits her face, I am reminded how pretty she is. She smiles as she says, "I love you," and "You should probably head to bed after this show." I nod, looking back at the television. I wonder why all of my girl friends think Don Johnson is so cute. "Oh well," I conclude, "to each her own."
 
My brother leaves right after the movie ends, but I linger a little longer. He says good night. My answer is, "Yeah, I'll see ya in the morning." I always do eventually see him when he drags himself out of bed on Saturday morning.

I turn the television off and head to bed. The room goes from light to pitch dark leaving a blinding glare in my eye. Not liking the family room when it is dark, even though I can't see where I am going, I bolt for the door leading to the "safe" part of the house. Ouch! I smack my head on the frame of the doorway. I stand, momentarily dazed, as anyone would upon hitting their head. I know I will be better if I just wait for a minute. I feel my way back to my room and soft bed, falling asleep as soon as I hit the mattress.

A beam of sunlight shoots through the window just opposite my bed, and shines directly in my face. My eyes open. I rub them to awaken myself and get a focus on something, anything. I must be very tired, because I am lying here rubbing my eyes, and rubbing them again, and still the blur of sleepiness remains. The pinks of my bedspread melt into the blues of my carpet, which mingle with the white of my walls, and the brown and cream of my dresser, and shelves. My world looks strange. Things aren't right.

I pass Jay's bedroom first, as I dizzily grope to find my way down the hallway I have somersaulted and bolted through for the past five years. I anxiously stare into his room, thinking, "Maybe I'm still just not awake yet; I just need to talk to someone, and connect myself with reality - a person who can tell me how ridiculous I am being for not just snapping out of this." But Jay's room is no different than mine, except that the colors that form his abstract arrangement are primarily blues and beiges. Is Jay in his bed? I can't tell even though I am straining to see. Yes, I guess he is. At least I think I hear him breathing. So I go on, feeling my way to the living room.

Dad is home. He doesn't look like Dad. He blurs right in with all the other colors in the living room. Now I am getting desperately scared. I finally tell him what has happened. We sit silently together, not understanding. Suddenly and silently, we both deny that anything has really happened, deciding to go on with our plans of going to the Moon Shine Park along with a group from our church. What else can we do? He says, "Maybe it will go away," and I agree with a spark of hope still remaining.

I spend my day at the park pretending I can see. I don't really know why, but my best friend helps me pretend. I just lightly hold onto her arm throughout the day. We even climb over and through rocks together, with me following her calls of "I'm over here," and "keep coming this way." I long to break away, to let my held-back tears flow until this awful film, which separates me from my world, is washed away. But I self-consciously go on pretending, straining to follow my friend, Teresa, a talking blob of color who I often lose in the water and rocks. I say nothing, wishing I felt nothing.

Are there clouds in the sky? I can't tell. Is that Dad or Teresa, or just a colorful towel? Doesn't anyone realize that there's something different about me, that I am just pretending to see them by looking their direction when they speak?

Finally home, I collapse in a chair and begin crying; it's not like most Saturday nights. Mom walks in from work and I tell her about my eye. Phone calls are frantically made, appointments set for hospital visits, and silence fills the house. There is no television on this Saturday night.

Three months later, on a Saturday evening, I am sitting in that same chair, my eye hideously swollen and scarred. Doctors had tried but failed in their many attempts to save the world I thought made life worth living. Now it is gone - that seeing world is gone. My sight, Mom's smile, Dad's beautiful gray hair, Jay's special, blue eyes, even the blur of colors are gone.

I am sitting, this Saturday night, in my soft, rather torn chair, a year later, smiling at the beauty I have found in my world. My world is full of wonderful, special people who are not often given a second glance by people in the sighted world, but I get to enjoy them. My world is full of sweet children who marvel at the mystery of my joy and resilience in spite of blindness, and learn more from it than I will probably ever know. My world is like a complex, scary yet exciting, rewarding while often dizzyingly, unpredictable novel, never hindered by what an eye is able to see, only by what a mind can think, a soul can experience, and a heart can feel.

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Mzkman said:

The incredible light of this soul will never cease to amaze me. I have had the honor and joy of knowing Angel as both a friend and soulmate for over 6 years. She is an incredible spirit that speaks to the heart of humanity and to know her is to love her. She is truly the love of my life. Her world is filled with more vision than mine will ever know.

November 04, 2007 | url

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