Good thing I learned to type in high school, memorizing the keyboard without looking, taking test after timed test until my words per minute neared 100.
These last few weeks I type by memory, ask people to call instead of text, use extra large type on my devices, and hug the shoulder when I drive waiting for my vision to return to normal.
I told my therapist yesterday that the sensation of being trapped has haunted me forever, resulting in all manner of escapes, from taking the stairs to seeking affairs.
Seriously, the desire to find an out has shaped my creative mind, leading me to leave California for study in Mexico, Boston, and Spain, and finally take a road trip and never return; to leave one man for the next or find another before leaving the first; to eschew 8 to 5 and create my own work world; and finally, to end up alone.
During all this manic activity, I only scratched the surface of truth, spending the majority of my life in self-delusion (or so it appears looking back). I entered relationships haphazardly to the detriment of both parties, driving us both crazy, until the second marriage and associated business reached a fever pitch of stress, poisoning my body till tumors grew which had to be excised.
Gosh. Why am I only now seeing this so clearly? At this time when everything in front of me is a blur?
This morning, making an appointment with the opthalmologist's office, I could barely see the account number on my health care card. I placed it under a florescent light and a magnifier and still couldn't tell if the third digit was a 5 or 6.
It's been like this for almost three weeks since contracting an infection in already dry eyes. The antibiotic drops from the optometrist were strong - so much so they knocked out the bug and stripped my eyes of any semblance of moisture. Or so I interpret the turn of events.
It's scary. A kind of trapped. Trapped behind eyes that won't give a clear rendering of surrounding phenomena. And no way out but waiting, hoping, trusting in the body to heal itself.
I've been through this kind of physical trapped before. With childbirth; cancer and it's surgeries and treatments; illnesses and other infections; broken bones. All require time and patience for healing.
With the second cancer, when the oncologist told me it might be in my bones and if so there was nothing they could do (it wasn't), I had that awakening that comes from believing one is close to death. Immediately, small details came into focus: flower petals, peeling house paint, freckles on my friend's face. The opposite of today's clouded vision
I imagine I should keep eyes closed, use warm compresses, sleep as much as possible, cover eyes with cupped hands to transfer life energy. That is my intuition.
While not in pain nor deathly ill, this is the first time I fully understand the great handicap it is not to see, or to see in a diminished way that profoundly alters daily existence.
And so, I fall back into those things that gave me comfort in other times of sickness and healing - rest, attention to nutrition, staying close to those I love, listening - to music, voices, intuition, all I cannot see.
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