I ran away from school the other weekend. I didn’t intend to. I just needed to get out suddenly. I rode the train all the way from New Haven to Philadelphia silently, in the dark, wearing sunglasses. Big ones. Black plastic Jackie O. sunglasses that not only covered my eyes but half of my face. And people looked at me askance, trying to figure out if I was really famous or just trying to look hip, my face drawn and elaborately serious, wearing my big black sunglasses indoors at 9pm on a cloudy night.
I’m used to this by now. I wear sunglasses a lot. I forget to take them off. Indoors, outdoors, summer, winter, day, night. And though I do love my big diva accessories, my sunglasses aren’t so much a statement of fashion as they are of health. I have problems with my eyes. So I wear sunglasses in the sun just like everyone else, to block the light, and in the shade too. To block the light.
And to block the looks. So no one can see.
So no one can see that my eyes, those same eyes I’m so careful to make up and show off every day with waterproof mascara, are red, tearing uncontrollably, swollen so I look like a cartoon goldfish. So no one can see, though that mask of elaborate seriousness I put on the lower half of my face, that I’m not just playing mod, that I’m actually in pain. I’m actually terrified.
I’m not scared anymore that I’ll lose my vision. I used to be, back when my eyes first started acting up. I used to sit in my chair with ice on my eyes, listening to the radio, wondering if I’d ever be able to see another movie clearly, if I could enjoy autumn quite so much without the leaves, if unscented roses would mean nothing but thorns to me. It seems almost silly to me now, knowing that I still only have to wear my reading glasses for teensy tiny fonts, that colors and movies are as sharp as they ever were. But back then I didn’t know. I thought I might go blind. I thought my whole life would change.
And it did, in a way. It did in that sunglasses aren’t just a fashion statement anymore. It did in that I appreciated the technicolor leaves in New Hampshire this October in a new way. Not just with my eyes. Because not only did I keep my sight, I gained a new kind of vision. The kind of vision that makes me realize that seeing isn’t true sight without the rest of my senses. That autumn isn’t just about color, it’s about color and the crackling scent of burning and your cheeks feeling pink with cold and the taste of frost in the air. And all of them mixed up together. And being glad you’re there in the first place. Eyes open, eyes closed, it doesn’t matter. Some things are not about seeing. They’re about being.
No, I’m not afraid of going blind anymore. What scares me now is that fear itself. That numbing shaking terror my sunglasses hid on the train the other night. My eyes were fine behind those glasses. A little red and a little puffy from crying, but not painful. Not like they used to be. They were just afraid. Not for any particular reason. Nothing scary about that familiar train to Philly. Just because.
Because the medicine that I take for my eyes does a number on the rest of my body. It makes me nervous. It knots up my muscles. It ruins my sleep. And it makes me panic. Panic when there is nothing to worry about at all. Crossing the street: I do it every day. My head is saying, “walk light” and my body is stuck on “stop.” Only it’s less like “stop” and more like “Freeze! Fire! Fetal Position!” I am terrified beyond movement, and the worst part is that I know, I know, that there’s nothing to be terrified about.
I just am.
In my un-panicked moments the long weekend I hid at my parents’ house recently, my father tried to probe me about this absurd fear. Am I so afraid to pour my own water? No. My hand shakes, but not that badly. Am I really afraid of the train? No. Am I still worried about blindness? No.
Well, sort of. A different kind of blindness. A loss of that new vision, really. The one that reminds me that seeing isn’t everything.
With all this concern about my eyes, all this upping and downing of medications that drag me up and down with them, I worry that I will forget that autumn has a taste and scent. I worry that I will panic every time I hear a pot clang in the kitchen, or a siren run down Church Street, and that I will never be able to relax those knots in my back. I know those side effects will go away, as they have every time before this. But I spend so much time hoping they don’t come back, I sometimes forget to remember the look, feel, non-scent of the odorless rose.
I want to remember that stuff. I’m trying hard to hold on to that second kind of vision. That’s what goes on behind those Jackie O. dark glasses. I’m getting ready to take them off, stand in the sun, and just be.
The days I can do that, those are the good days. And with the exception of the weekend I ran away, I have them more and more lately.
And it’s warm in the sunshine.
Leave a Reply