Sometimes, change is just miserable.

Change is inevitable, misery is optional.  Well, for me sometimes change is miserable.  Sorry I have been gone for a month, but I had family in town and then I travelled back to where I grew up. 

To travel while still working out the routines of a disability is daunting, overwhelming and exhausting.   I feel like all I ever say any more is: “I am exhausted”.  However, it is a different kind of exhausted.  It is the fatigue that comes from having to fight for every little thing that used to come with good eye sight.  I can’t read street signs, menus, marquees, price tags, and countless other things I have taken for granted until my good sight was gone.  I should reword that, it isn’t that I can’t READ them, it is that I can’t SEE them from a distance and quickly take in the information I need. 

At the airport, forget security and all the craziness of that, I can’t see gate signs in the distance, the displays on trains or shuttles, the signs that show the terminal, the names of the airlines, or the lovely monitors that tell you whether your plane is delayed, cancelled or just gone.  Now, looking at this list right now, I know that my family will get me to where I need to go (and did) and that if I was travelling alone I would go early and get help at the airport.  The key here is “the beginning stages of disability”.  You know the DISCOVERY phase. Just being in the situation and realizing all that I cannot see anymore is like being hit by a sleeper wave when you have your back to the sea.  It slams you to the ground, drags you a few yards out, and spits you back onto the beach gasping, choking, and wondering “what in the world was that?” 

I was informed that it can take 3 years to adjust to such a life change.  Okay!? I just passed the one year mark and have two to go.  I guess I am grateful I have gotten 1/3 of the way through, and that those who have gone before me are well adjusted and doing well with their circumstances.  However, there is one caveat.  My eye disease is still unstable and I could continue to experience a decline in my vision.  So, basically all the progress I make in this time could be abruptly changed and I am back at square one.  Have you ever played a game where returning to the start is frustrating, say like “Candyland”?  Where once or twice is tolerable, but upon the 20^th trip back you are thinking this game needs to live in the trash?  I think you get the idea.  Let us just suffice to say I am doing all that I can do and am trying not to be too grumpy about it. In other words, I can’t change my disability; that I am powerless over. But I can change my outlook in the midst of it, and choose not to let it make me feel so miserable.  I will celebrate the three steps forward, and breathe through the two steps back.