Walking in the other person's shoes

OCT 2 — I sat in the dark and closed my eyes tight.

I didn’t need to, the darkness was intoxicatingly thick around me. I couldn’t even see my fingers when held right in front of my eyes.

Somehow though it felt like if I closed my eyes I could make it go away, I could pretend it wasn’t all around me. So I did.

I closed them and I listened to the muted voices in the room, I listened to the sounds of clicks and snaps and whistles, what I would learn as I listened was the sound people were making to let each other know where they were.

As I squeezed them closed, big fat tears began escaping them and rolling down my cheeks. I had stepped into Allen’s world, and the world of every other person who had lost their sight. I went from being able to see 10 minutes before, to holding the hands of the people in my party not because I wanted to, but because I was forced to; I had no choice but to trust others around me.

I didn’t like it. I wanted to run and scream and get out of there as fast as possible. If someone would have asked me if I wanted to leave I would have without any hesitation, but no one did. And I knew that to ask the only person who knew his way out of the room for help, would not be right, for he was truly living blind, I had just temporarily lost my sight.

So I sat there in the dark. We had come to this place to experience for a few hours what it was like to live like our friends who had lost their sight. The experience was meant to give us a peek into their world, help us understand.

But I found myself so uncomfortable I cracked jokes and made silly banter with my friends around the dark table. While some in our group wanted to just be quiet and reflective, I could not. I needed to know that I wasn’t alone in the room, just as I often cope with situations in life, I laughed to cover my fear about the dark and loss of control.

Here we were, four friends sitting around a table, three of us who were sighted and one who had lost her sight a year before and was still dealing with the trauma and loss of it. And for the first time in the past year since she lost her sight, I truly experienced a minute of what that must be like. 

Though I knew she had to rely on me for many things, I never really understood how much trust she was putting in me to believe that I would direct her properly and not into danger, or that I would give her what she asked for or needed, and not what I thought she needed.

Suddenly the depth of the loss she had experienced hit me and I hurt for her in ways I had not before.

I appreciate beauty in our world, in people, in foods, in Nature, in architecture. But I have never realised how much I live with my eyes. Even my computer I’m using right now would be lost to me in most of the ways I utilise it for right now.

I had never considered what life would be like if I lost my sight. I had thought often about how it affected her, but it never occurred to me what it would be like if I lost the sense that I use the most.

To never see the beauty of a sunrise again, something that right now I usually complain about for to see the sun rise means being awake earlier than I like. To never see my girls become women and accomplish the desires of their hearts, to never see my patients, my co-workers, my family. These things had never been considered.

And truthfully I don’t think we need to sit around and consider the things that will most likely never occur, for to do so steals some of the beauty in the enjoyment of life as we know it, but sitting there in the dark, I did consider it.

I have continued thinking of it as I have walked with my dear sister through learning to accept that she will never have sight and as she has begun to do some of the day to day things that once were normal to her. 

I have rejoiced with her as she has utilised her other senses to learn to be normal again, but the reality of her loss still hurts me. That she is forced to learn a new normal means life is cruelly unfair.

The minute we decided to leave the darkness, I jumped up, happy to be able to use my sight again. I held the shoulders of the person in front of me as we wandered through the room to the hall which would hold light again and allow me to see. 

In the lighted room we sat, waiting for our eyes to adjust and I looked over at my sister, still living in darkness, and my heart squeezed and I tried to not let the tears escape and fall as they had a bit before.

Nothing looks normal anymore. Normal no longer has a look; but a feel, a smell, a sound, and a taste.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.