Beauty is defined by the sense of sight: nature, animals, women. The strange thing about beauty is how it is ever changing throughout history or through perspective. Yet, we still feel it’s pressures every day. It has caused pain and suffering throughout time, something that it viewed as positive and good has led to some of the worst feelings one can experience. Is beauty really worth it?
I believed beauty to be superficial, as something you see and note its appeal. At least, I did before. Before, I viewed the world as dreary, where people only want what they can’t have and step over others to attain it. I was controlled and manipulated to see things in a certain way to be another person who looks at the obvious but overlooks the important. I saw the world as mediocre, with good and bad so intertwined you couldn’t tell the difference. I thought that the beauty of the world- of life- was something seen and forgotten, but I was fine with living my own comfortable life with opinions that didn’t effect me all that much. And then my world came crashing down.
It started with a trip to the ophthalmologist. I’d been there about half an hour, sitting in an oversized chair. The ophthalmologist, Dr. Armel, looked nervous. He kept on glancing at me. Was something wrong? My palms began to sweat. Finally, he looked at me with a sympathetic look in his eyes.
The sympathetic look on my ophthalmologist's eyes alerted me that something was wrong. My heart dropped and my palms began to sweat, I shifted uneasily I was sitting feeling jittery
“I’m sorry, but the test results indicated that you most likely have Cone-Rod Dystrophy, your eyesight should be gone in approximately 4 months.”
I studied Dr. Armel as he looked at me, with concern in his brown eyes hidden away by the thick plastic frame of his glasses. I looked at the room around me, devoid of personality, bare, with pristine white walls with barely a scratch on them. I could see perfectly fine. What was he talking about?
“I’m not going blind! My eyesight is just fine, I’ve never needed glasses or anything. I’ve never had trouble with my eyesight, I think you have this all wrong, maybe you switched up my reports with another-” I rambled desperately.
“Ma’am,” Dr. Armel interrupted, clearly uncomfortable with the situation at hand, “I assure you that there has been no mix-up. Let me explain to you what Cone-Rod Dystrophy is exactly.”
“Okay.” I sighed, refusing to believe this was real. This didn’t happen to girls like me, there had to be signs or at least something to indicate that I was going to lose my eyesight.
“Cone-Rod Dystrophy is a disease that destroys the cones and rods in the retina of your eye,” he recited aloud in a empathetic voice, “ these rods and cones are in charge of absorbing light that signals the optic nerve that translates what you see to the brain, and if the cone and rods don’t work then eventually it leads to progressively deteriorating the peripheral vision to the point of blindness.”
“There has to be some sort of cure or something, right?” I questioned expectantly.
“Well, um, not currently, no,” Mr. Armel restlessly twisted his fingers. “I’m sorry, staying out of particularly bright light would help not strain your eyes, however, your eyesight will be permanently gone in about 4 months no matter what.”
I found myself at Bayberry Park. I sprawled over on the lush grass-covered hill that overlooked the park. I gazed at the lofty trees that spewed out leaves whenever the wind blew. I could see perfectly fine. How could I lose my eyesight in 4 months if there isn’t anything wrong with it? I couldn’t imagine a world without sight. How much it would limit me? I wouldn’t ever be able to drive, or go shopping, watch TV, or do my makeup, I wouldn’t even be able to see my family or friends. It wasn’t fair, I barely lived life and now I was going to lose a piece of myself that I relied on a daily basis and nothing can be done to save my eyesight.
After I am blind, I won’t be able to visit places like this, I won't be able to admire things from afar. Recognizing beauty after losing my sight would be impossible, not being able to see a beautiful painting, a beautiful landscape, a beautiful person. I would be cut off from the world. Knowing how it feels to have the gift of sight only to have that gift taken away from you is just not fair, especially if there is no way to get it back.
My first blackout happened 3 weeks after I found out about my inevitable blindness. The experience was hands-down the most terrifying I have ever had, thinking my sight had gone early, I panicked. The utter terror I felt when everything suddenly went black I could still remember, and I momentarily was paralyzed. I had blacked out 2 times afterward before It finally happened, I finally lost my sight. Waking up one morning I could not see once again, I shrugged it off as another blackout. My eyes hurt but I believed it to be just a side-effect of Cone-Rod Dystrophy, hours passed and my sight didn’t come back and that’s when I knew that I would never see again.
Losing my sight really taught me something. In the beginning, I was furious and upset that I was taken away from the world I only got a taste of. I was forlorn to know that I would never be able to do things that I took for granted. It was grueling to learn Braille script, which was a language for the blind by using raised dots as characters. I missed seeing, I was overcome by nostalgia for what I used to have. Missing my sight was painful for me, I wanted to wake up to see the sun shining through my curtains in the morning, I wanted to see my family’s faces again, I wanted to do things that normal people did. Although, I soon realized that I was different now and I couldn’t do the same things others could do. However, I soon I realized that blindness came with benefits.
All my life I was exposed to societal expectations when it came to my sight. I and everyone around me were narrow-sighted, we did everything and believed everything because we trusted society. We unknowingly oppressed the idea of equality and happiness in favor of materialism. The strangest thing was that I realized it when it was taken away from me. I now recognize beauty as more than just sight, I see it as something unique, something that can’t be described. Beauty is a feeling, not an idea. It is the feeling when good happens when things finally seem okay. I still long for sight but I know that I would keep the lessons I learned from this experience. Learning through my blindness, I now know that beauty doesn’t have a limit. It’s breathtaking even if it is overlooked and taken advantage of because beauty doesn’t stay the same. Always changing and evolving into something else, something that is beautiful but in another way. Beauty is indescribable because it doesn’t have only 4 sides, it’s everywhere whether you can see it or not. I’m happy with that. I know true beauty even if I am blind. My experience was hard, unfair, but I grew as a person and I understand now.
The definition of beauty according to Merriam Webster’s dictionary is, “The quality or aggregate of qualities in a person or thing that gives pleasure to the senses or pleasurably exalts the mind or spirit.” Senses. Beauty isn’t something limited to sight, and through my journey, I discovered that. I realized what true beauty is. It is something that makes us happy, that inspires us to be better than before. It is something that makes us proud. A sound can be beautiful, an action can be beautiful, an idea can be beautiful. Beauty is made up by good intentions and the the feeling of happiness when experiencing it. Everything is beautiful, but beauty is not everything.