Seeing Well for the First Time

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So, I have a number of vision disorders that did not become treatable until my sophomore year of high school. Additionally, I was unable to answer questions during the eye exam accurately due to autism and mental illness growing up, which made it hard to get glasses that helped as much as they could.

My sophomore year of high school, I started vision therapy, but it wasn’t until I was 19, when I got tinted trifocles with prisms, that everything changed.

That’s mostly what this post is about: seeing for the first time. I never knew that people could see the leaves on the trees from the ground. I didn’t know that our yard was full of clover; I thought it was just the couple of flowers I could see when I layed down. Briefly, I could see people’s faces, although my vision has worsened some since then. And the sky! I became obsessed with the sky. I spent probably the next 2 years of my life staring out of car windows and up outside, completely mesmirised by the clouds and treetops. I thought they were just for me.

I’m not sure if I’ve started to take these things for granted since then or the need for new glasses has taken some of them away again, but I will never forget that feeling and how rich it made my daily life.

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Dear Unnamed Friend

Dear unnamed friend, I carefully hoarded enough spoons to do the activity you suggested at the time you suggested. I went to bed super early and planned NOTHING for tomorrow to be able to do it. I just got discharged from psych this week, and the meds still aren’t all the way in my system, so I’m foggy-minded and emotional. I also woke up every 90 minutes last night for 30-45 minutes due to nightmares about the hospital that joined my normal nightmares. I told you I’d let you know around 9am today, when my alarm was set to sound, whether I could come to the 1pm event today, and I texted you that yes, I could come, but I needed to sleep until 10 to regain spoons. You texted me 4-5 times between 9:15 and 10, effectively cancelling any change I had to sleep, since it takes me at least 2 hours to wake all the way up. You tried to change the plans to pick me up around 10:15am, and I understand why. You were already in the area for something and didn’t want to drive all the w...

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