A simple exercise in gratitude

There are many days when I take my relatively clear vision for granted. In fact, I'd say most days, nay- nearly every day has fallen into this category. It's always that way with the essentials- you don't realize how good you have it, until you don't. Cheap food (damn you, Whole Foods supermarkets), clean drinking water (damn you, Aquapocalypse scare), and good vision. Never, ever will I forget to be grateful for you again.

It all started Tuesday morning on the commuter rail. As some other train passengers riding the rails do, I fell asleep on my morning commute. Napping on the commuter rail is an innocuous, simple, and usually satisfying pastime. This Tuesday would be different in a terrible, terrible way.

I fell asleep somewhere between the Bravery's "Believe" and the Antlers "Kettering" playing on my shuffle (thanks Jon!) When I woke up twenty minutes later, riding through the greener pastures of the North Shore, I made a terrible discovery: I could not see. As in a blurry, eye-blinkingly painful lack of vision. While there are very few places in the world where I would prefer to have this happen to me, public transportation does not rank high on the list. I panicked.

Struggling to the front of the train, I blindly groped around for the edges of seats that would propel me forward and off the train car at (what I hoped) was my stop. I tried to do this while maintaining an air of grace and sophistication, but I could feel other passenger's eyes on me. I am sure it was not a pretty picture. So I shot looks that said "maybe I am just too cool to keep my eyes open, okay?!" at what I hoped was a person and not just someone's jacket hung over a seat. Glaring at a jacket, I'm sure, would not help my case.

The conductor on my regular morning train is jovial man, known for winking and occasionally letting me ride for free. Today he laughed at me, "Hey there, Lucky. You tired today?" (Side note: he calls me Lucky for my history of hopping on the train seconds before departure. Regardless of whether I leave my apartment 5 or 20 minutes before the train is scheduled to leave. This ability amazes even me.)

"Must have got something in my eye." I laughed too loudly, overcompensating. If I had been able to see, I would have been met with a confused, possibly scared look. "Public transportation is never safe!" I continued. No, I am not sure what I meant by this. At this point I was running on blind auto-pilot.

My day only got worse from there. Driving on the road, trying to play "airplane," coloring inside the lines, and playing hide and go seek were not in the cards for the nephews that day. (It's not so fun to play Hide and Seek with a blind person.) So that day I was the sad creature in the corner, eyes closed, responding to what I thought the boys were doing, and trying to act like it was all normal.

Quinn (choking his little brother Cole by wrestling him to the rug.): "Ha ha! Auntie Emma, look at me!"
Me: "That's great, buddy!" I told him, staring off somewhere into the kitchen and saying a silent prayer to not step on anyone.

Finally, after avoiding any sunlit spot in the house and squinting in sightless agony like some weird sort of bat pirate, my sister and I decided I should just go home and try to sleep it off. I drove to the station, maxing out at around 5 miles per hour and using all my willpower to keep at least one eye open and avoid anything pedestrian-like. To add insult to injury, a complete lack of parking spaces had me cursing the sunlight and circling the station until I missed the train. I was forced to sit in the car for the next two hours waiting for the next inbound train to come, lest drive back to the boys and risk hitting something/someone. It was not a shining moment in the history of me. I fell asleep, my eyes watering extravagantly, as I tried to sing along with the words to distract myself from the pain. When a person came up to me to (most likely) ask me to move my car, they were met with a crying girl, rubbing her eyes and singing CCR perhaps a bit too loudly. While they didn't exactly run away, they didn't stay long enough to make a new friend, either. And that was okay with me. Better them thinking that I was going through some deep emotional life crisis through song than to know the real, pretty lame truth: my eye really, really hurt. No, I am not proud.

After mercifully falling asleep, I awoke up two hours later, clutching my chest and gasping for air. As my brain usually works, I was confident that my eye problem had manifested itself into some full body infection that had traveled to my lungs and would effectively end me. But a minute later I soon came to the realization that I had only failed to leave the window open a crack. A bright sunny May afternoon spent in a black car would suffocate anyone, but now at least I can empathize with dogs left out in the car during grocery shopping. Talking with my sister later, she told me she was positive that she was going to get a phone call from the police about a suspicious dead person parked for hours in her car in the train station parking lot. It was not a moment that I would want to be depicted in the movie of my life.

But I made it onto the train successfully, and somehow, after staggering and tottering through downtown Boston like a hung-over reveler in the wake of mardis gras, I made it back to my apartment where I now reside, using my sense of touch to leave my bedroom and get to the fridge. Though I may look like a drunken bat, I think I can ride it out from here.

It's not all bad. Besides a total crushing blow to my ego, I've learned to enjoy music in a new way. Last night I was so bored of not being able to see anything that I turned on my iTunes and just closed my eyes. It was a way more interesting experience than simply playing music in the background. Then, when I was so fed up I declared my lack of vision would no longer hold me back, my roommate and I watched Glee. Watched is a very generous term for what I did, but I think I got more out of the images I saw in my mind than Ryan did by actually watching the show. At the ripe old hour of 10pm I turned in, for lack of any useful activity that didn't necessitate vision.

Today, as I sat in my apartment fearful of the sunlight and hoping that the worst was over, I decided something: I needed to make a big gesture to the gods in order for them to restore my eyesight. That was why it hadn't come back yet! So, in the name of eye health everywhere (and especially in me), for the next thirty days I will not consciously take my eyesight for granted again. And by taking it for granted, I mean the hours I spend looking at foolish and foolishly addicting websites. Goodbye, chatroulettetrolling.com. Au revoir, graphjam.com. Adios roflrazzi.com. Ciao ciao, thesuperficial.com. You shall be missed. Hello, vision. How I have missed you.