We tend to build walls around parts of our souls, unawares, as a coping mechanism. We push our issues to the side and cover them over, closing off parts of ourselves to all of the infinite possibilities that the Universe has to offer, and then we become trapped, feel victimized.

October 2009 marked the beginning of my walk through the Valley of the Shadow. Every dark and shadowy place in my soul was brought forth and exposed to the light, every wall and barrier torn down. My tears fell copiously as those barriers fell. I did not yet know that the tears were washing away the remnants of those barriers.

 

You can watch my YouTube video (link below) or read the Part II introduction and chapter 11 below.

 

II. Shadow

Although it may seem perfectly natural to avoid pain and to cling only to that which we define as pleasurable or safe, life demands that we develop the courage necessary to face every moment and every situation in order to become wholly integrated and spiritually conscious beings. We are not here to escape from reality but rather to learn and grow through a diversity of experiences. Whenever we choose not to be fully present in any aspect of our lives, we create karma as a means of healing those un-owned aspects of ourselves that we refuse to address, so the seeds of karma always lie in the subconscious and unconscious, where all that is kept shadowed from the light of truth must be transformed within us and, ultimately, healed. —Blair Borders, Double Vision

 

I am a prolific journaler, especially in times of stress and travel, and I had a lot of stress in this year. I could try to provide a narrative about this time, but viewing it from the future, I would leave out a lot of things, I think, that are very important to understanding my struggle, and my experience of clawing my way back into some sense of normalcy—and even finding grace and peace in my heart. The chapters in this section are, in effect, a character study, a mythical journey with a “hero” who is only me, an ordinary woman who was often told that she was extraordinary.

Many of the journal entries from this time refer to the fact that I’m crying. As you read so many references to that, you might think, Big deal; you cry all the time. The thing is, until this point of my life, I rarely cried. That’s why I kept noting that I was crying—it was abnormal. As the months (and even years) continued, however, I began to discover that my tears can actually serve as an indicator of a number of things. Because I had cried so little before, this process of frequent crying attuned me to noticing under what situations I cried. Sometimes I cried because I was sad, but as the journey progressed through the shadow and into the light, increasingly, my tears were different, for different functions, which I finally (fully?) realized in November 2016 and noted in a journal entry:

We tend to build walls around parts of our souls, unawares, even those of us who are very in tune with ourselves and very open, often as a way of coping with something that occurs when we’re interacting with the world and we don’t have time to “deal” with whatever issues it’s bringing up, so we push it to the side and cover it over, maybe thinking we’ll come back to it later, or maybe doing it completely without knowing—which is why we need to regularly meditate and/or do some sort of energy clearing at least once a day, because we can close off a part of ourselves to the universe, to all the infinite possibilities, and then we become trapped, feel victimized. Or maybe we just feel detached, or hopeless, or [we] begin to despise others. All are symptoms that we have closed some part of ourselves off from divine love and truth, begun to separate ourselves from the Divine, and thus from others, begun to see ourselves as “us” and everyone/everything [else] as “them,” people and things that stand not necessarily in opposition to us but definitely as something we’re better than or apart from.

My tears come when one of those barriers falls, breaks down. The tears come to wash away the remnants of the barrier.

This, my Valley of Shadow, is the time when those barriers began to fall, to later be washed away.

 

11. October 2009

“Our health is a voyage and every illness is an adventure story.” —Margiad Evans

 

Friday  23 October 2009[1]

Sometimes I feel like my life has changed completely in the past week. Otrher times, I feel like it has barely changed at all. My vision was already returnng slightly in my left eye before the surgery. On Monday when I was speaking to [a client] on the phone, I was reading stuff off my white board and off my phone; I t was amazing. It was challenging, still, but amazing. I hed tears of joy over the feat So on Tuesday orning, Dr. L gave me amn impromptu eye exam with his PDA at the news [that I was seeing better]. H[e] was happy about the increased vision [although] the right eye was still the same==almost no vision in it.

 

NYWAY, THEY STILL OPERATED ON BOTH EYES, BUT THE RIGHT EYE FAR MORE EXTENSIVELY THAN THE LEFT. iT WAS MORE SWOLLEN AND MORE SORE AND MORE TENDER FOR MORE DAYSS. sTILL IS. iT’S ALSO FAR MORE PRONE TO CLOSING UP ON ME FROM MY BLOODY TEARS AND THE BUILDUP OF THOSE AND THE OINTMENT AT NIGHT IN MY EYELASHES. O [so] STILL AT NIGHT I OFTREN HAVE TO BE LED TO THE RESTROOM JUST BECAUSE I [can’t] CLEANSWE AWAY THE OFFENDING MAT OF MATERIAL FROM MY EYES. …

Yesterday, I had a bit more vision, even in my right eye. Everythikng;s still dim, to be sure, but certainly not as dim as it was before surgery—at least not all the time—it starts to get that way when I get sleepy or when I’ve just workedy my eyes too long. Because God knows that my eyes haven’t been abel to see this much in weeks, so they get tired easiy. It’s still really hard to track fast-moving things, too.

So how is it sometimes still like life a week ago? Sometimes, I still can/t find things I put down right in front of me. Sometimes, it’s still dark. Sometimes, I’m still terrified that this is the best I’m ever going to see ever again. Especially that last part. But as I need my pain medicines less and less and have Mom and Dad to take me out of the house more and more (even if I do just sit in the truck while they’re in the store), I can fight that feeling. It’s sitting in the house and being able to do nothing that I normally do here that cause the doom-and-gloomies to seet [set] in, and they are not my friends, no sirree! …

I reluctantly gave up three or four [editing] projects so they could be finished by someone else a little faster after my delays. I kept two because I was so close to finishing them. But I reallly wanted to keep the whole damn batch, because there were some really interesting reads in there that I wanted to work on. …

So, am I gloomy thins morning? It’s hard to sayj\. It’s a gloomy day outside, and I woke up this morning before everyone but my mom. My eyes are playing double-vision tricks on me this morning, so I realy don’t want to kep them open, because it gives me a headache. But I know the double vision went away yesterday with practice. … I expect once my eyes are healed that I may have to do a bit of retraining of my eyes—a bitof ocular boot camp, if you will. I remember as a kid, having lazy eye, that I had to wear a patch over one eye and go throu\rough a newspaper and pick out certain letters to retrain my eye, so perhaps someimg of the sort will be required this time. Stupid eyes. For twenty years they follow the correct training, then they adapt for three weeks, and you have to complete.y retrain them? I mean, smart eyes, but why the ease of reverrting to guerilla tacctics?

For some reason, that made me thiink of Aunt W and my phone conversation with her yesterday. … Aunt W said she’s been praying for me and kind of chided me for trying to give everyone heart attack’s. I told her I must have been trying to give myself one too because I’ve been just about as stressed as everyone else, and I thanked her for the prayers and said I’ve been begging them from anyone I can get them from because I know I need them. … She was also glad to hear that my spirits were up and reminded me that if I DED need to get treatment for depression, to take it seriously and not put it off, to get treatment for it so I could actually function. …

Anyway, as we were saying our goodbyes … I made sure to slip in … that I loved her. It took her a little by surprise, I think, because she bcktracked a bit and said she loved me, too. I guess it seems a bit strange because it’s been a while since I’ve told any of my aunts and uncles … that I love them, but lord knows I’ve [recently] been very open about my gratefulness and love for people. At least I’m trying to be.

I’m trying to say at least one praryer every day to say thanks for all of the wonmderful people ho [who] helped caref or me in the dr.’s offices nd hospitals and pharmacies in the past few weeks, for all my friends and family members who have provided emotional, financial, and physical support, for all the friends and family and coworkers and acuaintances who have extended prayers out for me; for every little improvement in my eyes; a little more prayer for continued improvement in my eyes;.

 

Saturday 24 October 2009

Today, low-level headache. Low-level discomfort. Just want to sleep all day. That’s not practical, of course, but it’s all I want to do. I almost wonder if I just overworked my eyes by reading emails for a couple of hours yesterday and then watching TV for a few hours, too. I was just utterly exhausted last night and fell asleep as soon as I declared that it was bedtime…after I stumbled around a bit like a drunk woman, running into things. …

[T]he down feelings are with me a bit today, but probably a bit because of the gloomy cold weather and the minor pain and because Mom and Dad went home. I always get a bit gloomy when guests go home. … Earlier I was bummed [at] thinking how sad I am that this level of light may be the brightest my eyes will ever see again. I got very, very sad. But then I chided myself because I realize it hasn’t even been a week since the surgery and the doc said it would take at least two weeks after the surgery for us to fully know where my eyes really stand.

 

Sunday 25 October 2009

I noticed yesterday that I was keeping my eyes closed a lot because then it didn’t make a difference that my vision was screwey—eyes closed, I could hear and think just the same if my eyes were screwey or not. But yesterday was a rough day. Especially in the afternoon, I’d just randomly start to cry—sometimes with a thought behind it, sometimes not. … After Mom called to check on me and I told her that I was having a rough day emotionally, she told me it was because she and Dad weren’t here to distract me, [I realized] that if my vision stays this way forever, my assumption of just always being able to jump in the car and drive down to see them whenever the urge strikes me is no longer a valid assumption. Mike assured me that … he’ll always be here to take me, but I couldn’t quite express that I meant for those times when he was working or out of town or otherwise indisposed and I just had an urge to go visit my parents. I haven’t done it often since college, but I’ve liked the promise of it since working from home.

But I berlieve a lot of my problems emotionally yesterday were from the fatigue and/or headache. I’ve always noticed before when I stay up too late or can’t sleep that my fears start to get the better of me, and yesterday, the headache was still a bitch, as, apparently, was the fatigue. I ended up spending about half the day sleeping. But whether that was because of the pain, the fatigue, or some depression, I’m not sure. I’m trying to wait out the depression bit, because I’m sure I’ve got some ,because of all the emotional ups and downs of the past few weeks, but I don’t want to go get MORE pills if [the symptoms are] going to go away on their own as I gradually get better. Of course, if I don’t get any better….well, that’s something I’m trying not to think of at the omment. It makes me shudder to think of it, in fact. I start every morning still with a prayer of thanksgiving and a prayer begging for light and sight to be returned to me, and that always leads to a few tears being spilled. I’m still terrified. Absoltuely terrified.

 

[I wrote today in an email to a colleague:]

As I’ve been telling everyone, I’ll take every prayer I can get. I’m terrified that my vision won’t return to its previous level. … I see a little improvement every day. I am impatient, however, and stubborn, and in cases like this, that’s a blessing and a curse. Good days and bad days mix together, and I alternately cry in fear, stamp my foot in frustration, and yell at the world, “No, this is not going to beat me!”

Also, the weight issue: I had lost 23 pounds in 23 days. We think the weight loss occurred in fewer days, actually. … So, of course, the rapid speed of the weight loss wasn’t really good for health, but the great loss of weight was wonderful overall. We’re willing to take the good with the bad in this situation.

Also,, the Topomax, which is for migraines, is also rumored to cause weight loss in a lot of people. It apparently affects the appetite, in some small way by affecting the taste of some food and drinks (like canned sodas, for one—ick!).

Anyway, since being home, we’ve weighed me every day, because one of the medicines calls for it. … Daily weight measurements must be taken with … the medicine to ensure that no one-day weight loss of three pounds or more occurs. So far, I’ve had a couple of discouraging days … and a couple of encouraging days. … If only we could get things evened out to a nice,, steady weight loss. But I suspect that will happen once I can get into a steady routine again—not taking pain medications once or twice a day and alternately sleeping through most of one day and then sitting up and lounging around most of the next day…

My appetite has returned. I am hungry frequently, and I often feel bad that I eat so much…until I realize that my breakfast often consists of a banana and a palm-sized muffin (the size of one or two of those muffins in the 5-muffin snack-packs). And I eat a meal like that three, maybe four times a day…

 

Monday 26 October 2009

Just got a call from a number I didn’t recognize. …  Toward the end of our conversation … I realized [who I was talking to, a family member]. … I’ve just met her so few times that I don’t remember her voice. I barely remember what she looks like. …

When I hung up the phone with her, I sent up a small prayer of thanks for all of the cre [care] and concern that others have for me and for all the great friends and family I have, and I also said that I hoped it wasn’t just a show of how blessed I am to have all these great friends and family members only to be a “consolation” for not getting my vision back. I said it laughingly, of course, but I still hope it’s not the case. I’m trying to make sure to stay in contact with all the people I started contacting before the surgery. Already, I’m starting to slip at keeping up with everyone, but it’s a lot of people to keep up with, so I’m trying to find a gentle, steady rhythm … so I talk to people regularly but not so often to be a challenge to them or me.

Also, when on the phone with [Mike’s mom] last night, she mentioned that when she learned that I had lost nearly all my vision, it nearly broke her heart, because she knows how much editing and reading mean to me. I think that’s the case with most all my close friends and family—they understand just how much a big deal this is to me. … Anyway, [she] mentioned that one of her cube neighbors has worked or works with the Coalition of the Blind. She said that when something like this is a main profession and someon’es main means of supporting themselves, the Coalition comes in and sets them up to help them with the software and all the [m]eans necessary to help them continue to make a living. There are many, many accesibility tools out there, she said, which, of course, I knew, I just wasn’t sure how to go about getting them and using them. … Of course, we’re still operating on the assumption that this vision loss is temporary and that this surgery will have been the catalyst for everything to heal almost completely, if not totally completely, even if slowly, before we start calling the Coalition. But now my mind is at rest on that front, at least.

 

Tuesday 27 October 2009

Yesterday, I had hope. I worked on the computer, I finished editing a book. I was able to look into Misha’s beautiful eyes and see the sunflower against a field against the blue sky that I see at the right distance from his eyes. And I was happy. But toward the end of the day, my eyes started getting tired. And they itched. We hadn’t put ointment inthem all day because the ointment makes my vision a little blurry and dark. But I resolved that today would be a day of rest for my eyes.

This morning, we put the ointment in … and I did almost nothing with my eyes today. But it has been dark. I have had a very hard time focusing on anything, and everything has been very gray and very blurry, and it has worried me. I managed to keep it out of my thoughts for most of the day, but when I tried to do just a couple of emails and read just a couple of files on the computer, it hurt my eyes to no end. My head started pounding, and all the words blurred. So I had to have Mike help me find and read some things.

And as the evening has gone on, things seem to have gotten darker and blurrier. Maybe it’s my panic. Maybe it’s the fact that things have gotten darker outside. I don’t know. I just know that I’m freaking out. I’m freaking out that I seem to be getting nowhere in trying to call about short-term disability. … And the little bit of work I can manage to eke out with this limited vision is no good at paying the bills. At this point, I can only hope that Mike will get a good-paying job close to home soon. And then I’ll have to figure out how to do things around home. Tonight, I tried putting away dishes from the diswasher, and I had to use a flashlight to see properly into some of our cabinets. … I nearly broke down in tears jjust from that.

Sure, I expected to maybe have to have help in fixing meals and keeping house and getting places when I was in my 70s or older, but not before I even hit 30.

And we can keep asking for money from family members to keep us going, but how long can we keep that up? There’s no point to keep asking for money to keep us going if we know it’s a waste and that we won’t be able to keep going anyway. Better to just abandon everything now and move home with one of the sets of parents than waste their money trying to keep this place so far away from all of them. We’ve worked so hard to get and keep this polace [place], and we love it and want to keep it, but…….how do you recognize when the battle is lost?

This stupid depression.

And Mike is, of course, ready for sex again. He has this crazy notion that because this vision issue resulted from pregnancy problems, getting pregnant again will fix the vision. I don’t know if he was just joking when he said it, but still…he’s in the mood….and rightly so. We haven’t had intercourse since sometime in August or early September. Two months. And because of my depression … I’m not in the mood. He doesn’t understand, and I don’t know how to make him understand. … I’d love the physical closeness, but my self-image is completely destroyed right now. I don’t even know who I am right now. I’ve lost myself again because of this, and I need to find myself…

But some good news…bored of sitting on my ass all day and listening to audiobooks, and unable to go for a good walk outside because of the rain, I decided to do some of the yoga and strength exercises on the Wii Fit this evening. I managed to do about 4 or 5 yoga poses and 3 or 4 strength training exercises, for a grand total of 19 minutes, and I was utterly exhausted. I understand, logically, why it was so difficult, given all the blood loss just a few weeks ago and then the sitting around, unable to do anything, really, for the past few weeks, but emotionally, that was rough, knowing how much more I was able to do just a few weeks ago, how uch [much] more I’ve always been able to do, even when in terrible shape.

ll [All] in all, a mixed bag of a day, I suppose, but leaning toward a difficult night emotionally. I just don’t know how to handle this. I’ve never been depressed before, and I’ve never had a challenge this big to face. I can’t even distract myself well, as most of my usual distractions are unavailable to me. What I wouldn’t give to be able to do a normal household chore like clean the toilets, do the dishes, fix a feal [real] dinner … or drive to the grocery store again! Byt U cab;t [But I can’t], I mean, Today, I got the mail from the mailbox, and as I was walking back up the driveway, I was opening and reading a card and walked right off the driveway and into the grass toward the strawberry patch. I wasn’t even aware of it, because I have no peripheral vision. When I noticed the softness in the ground, I just thought I had walked across a bit of driveway where a particularly large tuft of grass was growing through. It took me a few moments to realize that I had veered off the driveway. I laughed it off, but it really frightened me. I HADN’T EVEN NOTICED that I was veering off the path…

I’m so scared of this, I can’t even find the words. I’m scared of no longer being competent. I’m scared of being a burden. I’m scared of having nothing productive to do. I’m scared of wasting away. I’m scared of being beat down. I’m scared of not being able to see my parents’ faces clearly again. And I’m scared that if I manage to beat down my fears of getting pregnant again and actually have a baby that I won’t be able to see my baby, that I won’t be able to properly care for my baby. That’s ridiculous, of course, as blind women and men take care of children all the time, but that doesn’t make my fears any less.

 

Wednesday 28 October 2009

After last night’s roughness (Mike asked me to stop acting like a horse with a broken leg—to which I responded by breaking down into a huge stream of tears because I hadn’t realized that’s how I’d been acting), today is good.

We got to Dr. L’s office an hour early, and then they were running an hour behind, so after a VERY long wait in the lobby, we had a checkup. Of course, I was impatient about my progress and didn’t think it was so good, but the nurse who did my initial vision check said I was doing very well, and Dr. L was VERY pleasantly surprised. I wish I could have taken a picture at his reaction, he was so pleasantly surprised. Basically, I’ve made more progress already than he expected me to make at ALL. And there’s more progress to be made. He said most of the swelling is down, but there is a bit more to go. My left eye is in the 20/40 range, and my right eye is in the 2200 range. Yeah, that sucks. But he wants me to see an optometrist in the next couple of weeks, to have a couple of specific tests done, because depending on the results of those tests, I MAY be able to wear glasses to improve my vision enough to drive. Maybe. But my peripherals would have to improve a bit more. And we have some more follow-up to do with Dr. L in a few weeks and with Dr. H, too, but that just made me feel tons better.

And he said I can stop using the eye ointment. … And I can work whenever and however much I feel like, that I can’t hurt anything. I should just use my own discretion. Woohoo! Of course, my vision still isn’t back to where it was, but knowing that things look tons better reinforces my feeling that things ARE better, and I know that things will continue to get better…I don’t know HOW much better, of course, but we know that there is still some swelling to go down, so there is that room for improvement. Whew!

Mike said I had a BOUNCE in my step as we left the examination room after [seeing] Dr. L. Yup. I’d have to agree, though I didn’t see the step. And I’m glad to be done with the ointment. It did kind of soothe my eyes, but it made it really hard to see, which only added to my frustrations.

 

[From a file with only the month, no specific date]

I even found the place deep inside that allowed me to make peace with my vision never getting any better. It kicked and screamed at the idea, kicked and screamed in terror, but it grudgingly nodded that it COULD make peace with the situation if nothing improved—but it wouldn’t do so willingly. I turned that over to God and asked for help in making peace with the fate of my vision, whatever it might ultimately be.

 

Note

[1] This entire entry is boldface on this day either because it was the only way I could read the text on my computer screen as I typed or because after boldfacing the date, I forgot to remove the boldface from the rest of the entry—and never noticed the difference.

***

Thank you for allowing me to share this part of my journey with you. Please let me know what you think so far and if you want to hear/read more of my story.

If this is the first chapter of my story that you’ve read or listened to, you can catch up by listening to all of the episodes on my YouTube playlist, starting here.

 

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