This entry is going to be tough to write. Not because of anything emotional, but because I have new glasses. They work for distance vision, (ie, correcting my nearsightedness). They also have a prism in the left lens, correcting for my double vision, However, this time, for this pair of glasses, I opted not to get bifocals, as the last bifocals didn’t really work for me, and I ended up reading and writing things without them.
Not really ideal.
So this time, I’m opting for reading glasses (I’m planning on getting the most ridiculous cat’s-eye frames I can handle for those). This will hopefully make it easier for me to read. And write. And cook. Honestly, everything, with any kind of luck.
For now, though, I have to deal with no close up vision. And I can’t do this without my glasses on now, because the double vision is just a bit worse than it was, and I can’t do the computer screen without my glasses on.
Honestly, it’s really pretty annoying.
I got to thinking about how the past 4 years have gone. It’s been…well, mostly restful, sort of. But also a lot of work. I mean, I have therapies three days per week, where I go and do things to work out my mind, yes, but also work out my body. All that comes with a liberal dose of purposely doing things that make me quite dizzy, in order to make sure I don’t remain really sensitive to that part of my brain damage.
It’s a lot of work.
Now don’t get me wrong, a lot of work is fine with me. I have a tendency to push myself a bit. Might not be all that obvious to anyone who’s reading this blog who doesn’t know me personally, but I’m not usually ok with doing things half-assed. I put in the effort of my whole ass, actually. That philosophy definitely extends to my therapies. Might even be more obvious in my therapies, to be honest.
This isn’t a brag. It’s just how the whole thing works. I do this stuff because I can’t remain only part of myself for the rest of my life. Does this mean I resent my disabilities? No. Why would I do that? All of…this, it’s my life now.
We all have our lives “now.” They usually don’t match up with what our lives were, even if we’re not suddenly disabled. We start out our lives thinking, likely, wtf? How did this happen? What is this? Why am I not weightless anymore? I’d cry too, even now.
Then we get older, and we meet other people in our family, and likely marvel over that. Then we get still older, and meet people outside of our own little circle, and marvel over that.
Each stage of life is a whole new set of circumstances. You go to school. You graduate school. Maybe go to a different, more advanced school, where you learn skills to be a whole new person. Maybe you go straight to work, where you learn to be a different type of new person. You meet someone and maybe settle down to be in a whole new life, plus the one you had before. Or maybe you prefer to meet several other people, and then not settle down. At each of these stages of life, you change.
People encounter very different changes. Some changes are tragic, some are sad, some are happy, some are fantastic. Even if someone’s life ends, life is different for everyone around them. All of these differences are changes, and everyone rolls with them, no matter how stubbornly we may try to resist the change.
My point here is, we adapt. It’s what we were designed to do, if you will. Whether you look at it from a religious perspective, where God gave us free will, and we use it to live our lives, or from the scientific perspective, where we evolved due to our reactions to change in our environment: We all change. Really, we do an amazing job of it. I mean, we’re still here, still advancing.
That’s kind of cool, when you think about it. We, the people before us, the people before them, through far more than just a simple millennium, have all been adapting and changing. Thinking new thoughts, dreaming new dreams, making new things. Every time we think “there is nothing new under the sun,” we’re wrong. Something new always pops up.
