April 27, 2011: 10 days before Graduation

Less than two weeks before graduation, life threw me an undeserved, hellishly ass-blistering curve ball (Sorry mom.  I know you're reading this, but I can't think of any non-expletive language strong enough for how it made me feel).  I woke up one day and found I was blind in my left eye.

Let that sink in.  Keep in mind that I was less than 10 days from graduation, already dealing with enough stress to make an elephant have a coronary, and looking forward to the freedom and independence that graduation day would give me.  I mean, I was going to be a real, live adult, able to confidently apply for real jobs with real benefits, maybe help mom get a house, maybe...maybe start my own business.  I was the future.  The WORLD was mine.  All mine.  I just had to open my eyes and see the opportunity, to reach out and grab what was right in front of my face.  At least that's how I felt, until I opened my eyes, eager for that new day and found half of that world obscured by a field of pure white.

Any sane person would have been completely hysterical.  But, I don't operate like that.  I don't panic first.  I analyze my situation, thoroughly.  I research the problem.  I locate the solution and I take a fist full of analysis to whatever 'expert' I need to see to get the problem fixed.  After the business is taken care of, the problem, fixed, and there's nothing left to do, then I panic.  My freak-out moment occurs in the moments after, when everyone's out of the knife fight without a scratch, sitting at home, watching television and in fresh pajamas.  I guess that's how long it takes for my brain to stop analyzing things in the third person and realize that it could have very easily taken its last think.

So, in a way that was totally natural for me, I sat on my bed, bewildered and staring at what should have been my room.  I recognized that it didn't look like my room, but only because half of it was obscured with fog.  I closed my 'bad eye', looked through my 'good eye'.  Switched.  Repeated the process.  It was certainly my left eye.  My left eye was malfunctioning.  The entire thing was seeing white.  I decided that it must be dirty.  I wiped it.  The world was still white.

I went into the bathroom, looked in the mirror to see if I'd somehow acquired cataracts in my sleep.  My eye looked normal.  Was it glaucoma?  It runs in my family.  I blinked and watched my pupils contract and expand.  It was the same test the eye doctor did every time I had an exam.  I know, because I asked them why they kept shining that blasted light in my face.  My left eye was the same, clear, milk chocolate brown as my right and its pupil contracted and expanded when light hit it, like normal.  I washed it out with eye drops.  Nothing changed.   I performed my morning ablutions as usual because my mother was yelling 'AREN'T YOU GOING TO WORK TODAY!?' in the background. 

I stumbled back to my room, a little disoriented, more disoriented than I realized.  I sat on my bed in complete shock for a full 25 minutes, just blinking.  I decided that it must be stress.  Stress could do anything to the human body.  By the time I got dressed, I could see as well as I did the day before.  See?  Stress.