It sounds so stupid but having something like your vision
taken away from you is possibly one of the saddest things I could imagine;
whilst speaking to this woman she explained her story of how her vision
gradually deteriorated. She said things such as “I watched my husband literally
disappear in front of me” and “I’ll never be able to see any new members of the
family, I can’t actually see my family anymore, people change and I’ll never
know how they’ve grown or developed”, at this point she burst out crying saying
“I just want to see my family.” I can honestly say this was heart breaking! She
talked about how a doctor said that possibly in the future her vision may start
to come back, saying there’s hope she might actually be able to see again; I
think that’s the key thing to any bad situation – hope. No matter how little of
it there may be, it still exists and sometimes that’s the only thing that gets
people through.
The remarkable thing about this woman is the change in her
we witnessed. From literally watching a woman fall to pieces in front of us,
talking about how she couldn’t leave the house for 3 months and contemplated
suicide, we then watched her mood change instantly as soon as she started to
talk about her guide dog. It was amazing, like two different people. She
sounded like the most full of life person I’d heard in a long time, really
positive and really enthusiastic about everything. She said “Going blind is
life changing but guide dogs are life changing too” and you could literally
feel how much love she had for her dog. It was amazing! She seemed so happy,
despite this horrible thing happening to her and I couldn’t help but think that
if the same thing happened to me, I wouldn’t have been anywhere near as okay as
she seems.
It got me thinking though, what the f*ck would you do if you
went blind? You’d sharp find out who really cared about you, you’d appreciate
everything a hell of a lot more, you’d probably regret a lot of the things you
didn’t do, and you’d probably realise if and just how much of a shallow person
you are. I mean how many people would like you if the whole world was blind? I
think people are disillusioned a lot by looks. Nasty personalities covered up
by a pretty face. Pretty faces don’t always = pretty personalities. People forget what's important, myself included. Knowing
that having your vision swiped away could happen to anyone makes you question
yourself. I made a conscious decision to try and be a better person, make more
use of my time and achieve as much as possible because you don’t know what’s
around the corner.
Think about it. You can't see what your friends look like, your family look like, you'd never know what anyone new you meet looks like, you wouldn't even know what yourself looks like. Do you forget over time? How would you even look after yourself? I can't imagine what a faint image of someone in your head is all you have to hold on to. I suppose meeting people would be like picturing a character in a book, you picture them a certain way and make your own image of them. Small things that we look at every day, you'd never be able to see again. So many times I look at things or people but I'm not really looooooking at them, sometime I think we all miss the beauty of things. It would be a very lonely world not being able to see, you'd be alone with your thoughts which is why it would be so important to be positive.
Think about it. You can't see what your friends look like, your family look like, you'd never know what anyone new you meet looks like, you wouldn't even know what yourself looks like. Do you forget over time? How would you even look after yourself? I can't imagine what a faint image of someone in your head is all you have to hold on to. I suppose meeting people would be like picturing a character in a book, you picture them a certain way and make your own image of them. Small things that we look at every day, you'd never be able to see again. So many times I look at things or people but I'm not really looooooking at them, sometime I think we all miss the beauty of things. It would be a very lonely world not being able to see, you'd be alone with your thoughts which is why it would be so important to be positive.
I’ve spent a lot of time lately arguing and worrying and
battling with different people for different reasons. What’s the point? Noone
knows what the main goal in life is but I think above all it’s to just be
happy. This woman was happy … and she couldn’t see. If people like that can be
happy, anyone can. It was inspiring to know there’s people like her out there,
strong minded people. Whilst the rest of my group pottered on sorting dates and
what not out for our next meeting, I took the time to sit and talk to her a bit
just about how well she’d done in her interview and how I found her story
inspiring. While speaking to her I was thinking ‘she doesn’t even know what I
look like, she just hears voices’, all the people who helped her out e.g. the
woman who runs the guide dog charity who's hugged her and comforted her whilst she cried, they are massive parts of her life and
she can’t even put a face to their voice. It’s so sad. I tried to imagine what
living in total darkness with nothing but hearing things would be like and I
can’t, I really can’t.
Anyways, this was just a bit of spir of the moment post.
Just about what’s on my mind really … if you’ve read this far I suppose the
thing to take from this post is to not take anything for granted, I know I’m
going to try and not to.
