I Didn’t Realize I Couldn’t See

How my eyes revealed what I was and wasn’t seeing

As the story goes

I couldn't see the big E on the chart. It always starts that way…

In one year, I went from fine to almost legally blind.

Today, as I was sitting and reflecting, I was thinking about wearing my glasses.

Like hair, some people know me as blonde and some know me as a redhead based on when they met me and my hair of choice that year.

The same goes for glasses.

Some people only see me with glasses and some rarely see them at all.

There are in betweens, where it is not jarring to see me with or without them, but regardless, when people think of me, they usually remember how I looked the first time they saw me.

For some, that is the first meeting. For others, it is after hearing me speak and act.

Thats the thing about seeing

It depends largely on our ability to see.

And I am not talking literally.

I am talking about the ability to see self enough to see other.

The ability to be in the moment enough to take in what you actually see.

To take note.

And that depends solely on your congruency.

Back to my literal vision.

This story isn’t weighted to me, it just is.

But today I took a step back to actually see it, hear it.

And I thought, wow, I almost couldn’t see.

Wait a minute, wow, the beginning of my life… what did I actually see?

I usually joke that I don’t know if my memories are blurry because they are far away in space and time, or if what I am remembering is how I saw it.

So on some level, I have always been close to this realization, but today I actually saw it.

The realization

Holy shit, how much of a people pleaser was I to have gone possibly months not seeing well without others catching on.

I was 4 or 5 at the time of diagnosis, and let’s give the benefit of the doubt, my sight could have declined rapidly.

Regardless, no one knew until it a supposed giant E staring me in the face.

Whether it was years or days, my parents were shocked and still cannot fully make sense of that moment.

But here’s the thing, it wasn’t one moment.

That was my lived experience, one I have brushed off as something unimportant.

I am not even going to bring up the energetic and spiritual implications of this story now that I am in a space to see them.

What I will leave you with

I must have been so good at seeing behind what was presented to me that I couldn’t trust my “blurry vision” at face value.

So I learned to read between the lines.

To figure out what was expected.

Not just what I was expected to see, but what I was expected to feel and how I was expected to act.

My “shy little self” didn’t know how to be an inconvenience to someone else, because I had already learned that I could be.

Luckily, my vision is much better physically, literally, and metaphysically now.

And even this story I shared is a version I have created.

It may or may not be exactly how it happened, but it helped me understand myself.

To love younger me.

To feel my pain deeply and learn to love even deeper.

My people-pleasing recovery comes from moments of seeing myself and seeing others, in the context of the moment I am actually in.

In this moment I saw younger me a little differently
And today I think I really saw
her.

Blonde without glasses,
Candice

P.S.

Maybe next we could unpack a curiosity that comes up from time to time, but I have yet to have the strength to unpack and feel.

If I wore a patch for a few years of my life due to this lack of vision, why is it we have no pictures of it?

Though this depends on context and other due to my age, I know it would shed light on a lot about me today.

You don’t have to figure this out alone.

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