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Day One Hundred Forty-Seven:  May Your Strength Give Us Strength

   Tomorrow I get the stitches out.  Tomorrow I will treck into the cave of darkness that is the final pain for this eye that I can endure until the next surgery, and by then I will have worked up enough courage to do it…again.  After what seems like a billion (nine) operations you’d think I’d get less nervous about them, but nope.

It’s come to my attention that a lot of people don’t really know what it’s like to live a day in my shoes, so I have heard through the grapevine that there is an ipad/iphone/ipod touch app on the CNIB website that you can download for free and see different eye conditions.  I think it seems kind of cool, I wouldn’t know how to do it but you can figure it out for yourself if you wish.  I have some kind of retinal detachment thing, so, that would be cool for you, probably.

If you are not an ipod touch user (or the only apple products you have are an ipod classic and an itunes, like me) then I can describe it a little for you.

To start off, I can’t see even a little out of one side.

The other side it’s kind of like when you squint into the sun and then try to look/read things.  I can see colours, and movement, and when on the computer and the brightness is fabulous I can see things, but for the most part I’m useless in a dark room or on a sunny day.  Reason number five hundred why I should move tot eh perma-gloomy London. 

Recognising people is difficult for me.  This becomes embarrassing.  I try to make situations less embarrassing by making jokes.  Laugh at these, this helps me.

I like to go to familiar places because when it gets darker I can’t see much at all, and I am nervous to ask for help.  I will, if I need to, but I get kind of..shy.

There are other things, little things, that are obvious differences, but those are the things that socially put me apart. Maybe the exam taking and the reading sapects are different, but for the most part I strive to be as similar as possible.  I’m just like you I just do things differently!

I work with kids who can’t se at all and haven’t for years, sometimes since birth, and they are so strong and vibrant that I couldn’t be more proud of them.  They inspire me every single day to get up in the morning, to take the bus to meet people to make friends and have relationships!  And every day that I spend with them I try to teach them the same, to inspire them to travel the world and go on dates and be vulnerable.  Those things are allowed, if you try your best those things can be comfortable.

This was going to be a lot different I started off writing this as something..well, a little less heartfelt.  All I want to say is that I’m strong, and I’m the same old me.  I still mess up and make mistakes, I still do the things everyone else does, I just..well, I do them a little different.

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