Because it has been so long since my initial vision loss, I sometimes forget that I don’t see the world in the same way that people with twenty-twenty vision see things. Can it really have been more than thirty years ago that my sight changed! In some ways, living with vision loss has almost become the norm for me. In fact, there are times when I even forget that I don’t see well.
Sometimes, when I rush about ready to do something or other I suddenly realize that I can’t. I have simply forgotten that I am unable to see.
Let me explain with this one example. Several years ago, as Lyle was reading the local paper, he came across an ad for a special deal on my brand of shampoo. It was a great deal, so after my meeting downtown the next day I walked to the drug store. I was excited to take advantage of the sale. I’m not sure if you can imagine my surprise and subsequent frustration when I came to the shelves of hair care products. It was only as I was looking at the myriad bottles that I realized that I couldn’t tell the difference between the shampoo, conditioner or hair colouring – much less which particular samples had been on sale. Naturally there weren’t any sales assistants around to help so I ended up going home and waiting until Lyle was available. I’m not sure why I was so surprised because in my head, I knew that I hadn’t been able to see details such as product labelling for a number of years prior. I had simply forgotten that I had a sight disability.
I was also thinking about this strange phenomenon when I woke up this morning. I had been dreaming, and in my dreams I saw perfectly clearly. The people I met and saw in my dream land had the faces of people I knew when I could actually see them. These days I don’t see features and faces at all. In a way, it was quite frustrating to wake up to a world of blurred vision again.
Partial vision has many paradoxes. Even after the long haul of thirty plus years, I think that I am still getting used to it all.
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