Monday 29 September 2014

Rambling thoughts...

I've been thinking about the continuing loss of my eyesight recently... More so than I usually allow myself to think about it. 

My 'normal' stance on it is my sight will get worst, my sight might go completely, my doctors can't tell me when or how bad it will get, at the moment there are no cures, no treatment to halt the progress and fuck all I can do to make a difference to it. 

No amount of worrying, stressing, crying, hoping, praying etc is going to make one iota of difference to my life, to my sight as it stands now. 

So for the most part I do my best to appreciate the small things, I love to see the glee my guide dog has when he's free running! 

I do my best to take in as many views, pictures, photos, faces, expressions, colours and find ways of associating sounds, touch and smells to the above. 

I try my best to really take in how my family and friends look, the way their faces change when they laugh, when they're being serious, the sideways glance when I or someone else says something slightly stupid, their mannerism, their posture, their general 'being'. 

I try my utmost not to let my amazement at the amazing variety of colours on trees at this time of year be tinged with sadness, will I see them next year? In five years? In ten?!

When I smell lavender, the rain, cut grass, the salt air at the seaside, the greasy chicken & chips in the high street, petrol while sat in a car at a petrol station I take the deepest breath I can and really, really, really look at what's around me.

Colours fascinate me, I'm not an artist, but I really appreciate colours in the way I imagine an artist would do. A blue sky at 7.30 in the morning is wildly different to the blue sky at midday. I recently saw the sun set on the Thames somewhere between Hampton Court and Windsor... I'd never seen, or perhaps actually never noticed, colours like it before. I can't begin to do it justice in words, but I am so very pleased to have seen it, it is now and always will be in my minds eye. Just like the stars in the night sky I saw when I worked on the side of a mountain in North Carolina and the the stars I couldn't see a few years later when I worked on the side of a mountain in South Wales.

When I think of the things I could once see, that I now can't, my heart breaks a bit. When I think of the things I can see now, that I may one day not, my heart breaks a bit. When I'm told I can't be told how long of 'good' sight I've left, my heart breaks a bit. When I'm told maybe, maybe, maybe you'll always see something, my heart both breaks a bit and swells...

'Maybe' is both terrifying and full of hope...