Blinded By Sight

Blinded by Sight

There is something about being blind, even if for only a few days, well a week. The explosion, the flash, something, no one is entirely sure, triggered something in my mind that shut down my ability to see. It wasn’t that I was physically impacted, like being hit by something, but I remember the flash.

I’d had bright lights shined in my eyes before, flashes from cameras, strobes at a concert, but nothing remotely close to the impact of the explosions flash. 

Some people that stopped by the hospital asked how I was doing, and I had to think about it. No one could tell me definitively if I would regain my sight. The doctors said it was more than likely to return, but there were no sure things when trauma was involved. One of my friends said they had heard of cases where trauma resulted in people losing memory, hearing, and sight. Has something to do with the brain being shocked, as if it was stunned by something it didn’t know how to interpret and spins out of control shutting down sight, movement, whatever is involved in the mix.

I would admit I was frightened at first. The idea of losing your sight is debilitating. It is as if you realized for the first time that you had taken the most amazing ability for granted, because you never had reason to question not having the ability to see. I was only without sight for a week and it changed not only my ability to navigate, but my ability to conceptualize. I wasn't able to verify what I perceive a thing to be. 

Words don’t have the same meaning. Lightning, drought, fire, all concepts I never thought about. I can feel the charge of lighting, the dryness that accompanies drought, the heat of the fire, but can’t see the cracked earth, the fire spitting sparks into the air, its colors orange, red and blue disappearing into nothingness, and Zorro’s slash at night times darkness, leaving a jagged scar that disappears almost immediately, but can’t be forgotten.

The darkness is not only in your world, but in your mind. It is as though your memories have been challenged. Think about how you describe life and the elements of it that you use to describe unsuccessfully, the beauty of everything. Words do not replace the hole lack of vision leaves, in your ability to appreciate what your eyes can only describe to your entire neurological system. Much of life’s irony, satire, folly, is recoded without words. The hypocrisy of actions is far more impactful when observed, than can be with words. Without sight we are limited by the vastness of our imagination, or the lack of it.

It made me realize how many things in life we take for granted, never imagining they could be gone, changed, manipulated, and all to disguise or alter one perspective in favor of another.

Lying in the dark not knowing what time it is, what day it is, made me realize, did it matter? Time although the arbiter of our day, the cop in the street directing the traffic that rolls through the mind behind our eyes, is off duty. When time has no parameters we tend to procrastinate, Mañana, next week, next year. 

The immediacy that time projects, is realized when we realize how little time when compared to the history of man, we have to contribute to the process of equality.

Being unable to see places, people, everything in a new perspective, that alludes the discrimination built into sight. The judgmental designation we attribute to how people look, causes us to listen to what is being said. When you strip away the visual affects that tend to be distorted in an effort to drown out the sound, with the noise solicited by sight, you begin to see for the first time.

When you remove the theatrics and circus visualization all you hear is elephants trumpeting and donkeys braying, but not the child pulling on the sleeve of his uncle Sam, and asking to be lifted above the ruckus behavior in order to see what all of the fuss is about. You don’t see the fascial expressions of the one telling you he simply can’t reassure you, you will see again. You can’t see the impugned face of your family when they look upon you, and see not the promise they hoped for, but an invalid who would be fortunate to live life on his own terms.

The light came back slowly. A light that evades the shades, the curtain, a mixture of dawn and dusk, hope and disappointment, but change. When lost in the black hole of uncertainty, hope becomes the promise of change. It also allows you to prepare for the chance that you have experienced the change, and now must learn to live within its boundaries.

The day they took the bandages off, I realized that the idealism promoted by light was magical. It provides a vision of a future even when you can’t see. It is the experience of faith, not simply the notion of it. It is the freedom to negotiate with yourself an outcome that you can be a winner, no matter the outcome. 

When navigating a tragedy, at least one perceived by the incumbent, your options are limited. You are going to recover. You are not going to recover, or find yourself impaired. Not what you would consider ideal odds for optimal satisfaction. 

The day before my sight returned, I played out the various scenarios available to me, I realized it didn’t matter. What would happen, would happen. What had happened, had happened. All that was left was to confront the finality of whatever the outcome would be.

You are kept from jumping off the cliff by hopes that you can learn to fly. The darkness is let out, and the light let in, in doses. On the sixth day I realized I could see shapes, some color, but nothing clearly. Would I go through life in a haze of uncertainty, hoping I would improve, hoping I would become who I was.

But that is not possible, once you have died it is impossible to forget. Although you don’t remember being dead, it gives you a totally different perspective on being alive.

When the bandages came off that Sunday afternoon, my hopes were dashed, and then within a few moments I began to see shapes, smeared combinations of color, and finally I could see a face. 

Thinking of that day, that time, that face, I realized that I now see faces in a different way. I listen, not just see. I see, not just look. 

When life becomes a series of choices, like a smorgasbord, the choices become diminished by their sheer numbers. When you take away all but the essentials of life, you are able to realize how lost and confused you have been by the sheer beauty, and amount of life you have been fortunate enough to experience.