BUT I THOUGHT WE ALL WERE PARTIALLY BLIND.

When I was a new student in a high school years ago, all of my new classmates told me astonishedly: “My, but you look EXACTLY like Ln. Even your voice is so similar to hers.”

Ln was a student in that high school too, but she moved away some time before I came. I never get to know her, but I was shown pictures of her. And yes, she looks like me. A lot.

Later I was also told that Ln is partially blind. I mean, one of her eyes doesn’t function at all. Because both of her eyes looked perfectly normal, none of her family members suspected a thing. She, of course, was too young to realize that she had something abnormal.

The moment of truth came when she was 8 years old. She was playing with her aunt one day, when she playfully covered one of her eyes with her palm and asked her aunt: “Auntie, isn’t it funny? Why can we still see when we cover this eye with our palm..but..” –then she put her palm over her other eye—“..but we can’t see when we cover this eye?”
Her aunt was terrified, and said cautiously, “What do you mean, Baby? But I can see, we all are supposed to be able to see, whichever eye we cover with our palm.”

I wonder what the hurt was like to her when “we” became “I”. “We can’t see with this eye” became “I can’t see with this eye.”
What surprise came to her when “we” became “you”. When she told others “Why can we see with only one eye?” and others told her “You see with only one eye. We don’t.”

I naturally had this exactly same opinion too, when I was younger. I thought everybody was like me. Never once it occurred to me that I was different from others. Ln was lucky that the person who broke the news to her was a kind, trusted person. I was told that I was different by a very unwise person. Whenever I looked back to that experience, I regretted that I ever trusted that person with my story. I really, really shouldn’t have done that.

Almost exactly 4 years ago, I met a man who I trusted enough with my stories. He likes thinking and analysing things to death, and his vast knowledge amazed me. Soon we had dinners together after work regularly, and our talks varied from our friends, wave-modulation (deargod, as if there wasn’t anything more interesting to talk about over dinner), and daily life. Soon we graduated to more advanced topics I don’t normally discuss with anyone. Like the years I spent studying classical music, religions, and beliefs. And we graduated even further, until I hinted that topic lightly. Just to test the water. Just to see how he would react.

I still remember how he reacted: he reached a hand across the dining table and held my elbow. Then he broke the news to me, once again changing “we” into “you”. Changing “everybody” to “only you”.

And once again I wondered whether Ln felt as alienated as I was, when she found out that not everybody was partially blind like her.