When I was first diagnosed with RP and thinking constantly about what it would be like to be blind, I was gripped by the spikes of claustrophobia.  I imagined that the world would become tiny, the darkness choking me and snatching my breath; the term tunnel vision, which is used liberally in describing what it is like to have RP, absolutely terrified me.  The thought of it was constricting; even writing this, I am holding my breath, as if doing so will stave off the inevitable. The day of my diagnosis was the day I started waiting for the world to close in on me.

I have always been somewhat addicted to darkness, prone to seeking out its path and wrapping myself up in the comfort of its fingers, but in the 15 years since my diagnosis, darkness has taken on new meaning and form; it has left the confines of my mind and heart, and settled into my eyes. I have come to realize that the reality of darkness, in relation to blindness, is the opposite of what I originally feared.

Now, the darkness feels immense. It makes me vulnerable and exposed rather than protecting me, like it did before RP showed up.  The darkness swallows the edges of everything and comes into a twisting life of its own.  In the dark, I feel as if I am always about to fall and whatever space I am in loses its definition and its structure.  It is unsettling.

The most recent experience I had of total darkness, was during my ERG, which you can read about here. During the ERG, the darkness came to life; I could see its tendrils twisting around me, escaping boundaries that only exist in the light.  I realized that the darkness is limitless; it has no parameters and nothing about it is predictable.  It takes something compact and at once expands and erases it.

Although I am still afraid of  what continued vision loss will do to my life and to my relationships,  I arrived at a place of acceptance a long time ago.  I suppose I have grown to both love and fear the darkness.  RP has been a part of my life for a long time; fighting it is futile and although I never welcomed it, blindness is a part of my fabric and I accept its texture.

I want to help expand peoples understanding of what it means to be blind and how a disease like RP works, so I am going to write a series of posts about the mechanics of RP and how it has manifested itself in my particular case. The first in the series, called, “What do you See?“, I posted a few days ago, and I will continue the series next week.  I hope that anyone who reads “Stories from the Edge of Blindness” feels free to ask questions; if there is something you are particularly curious about, please let me know and I will write a post about it. Thank you for reading and for being a part of my crazy road to blindness.

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And, if you are in the mood for some pictures of some seriously cute pugs, you can find my babies, Blossom and Jade, on Instagram.