If something cannot be seen, does it cease to exist but in the memory of those who once knew it? If someone is surrounded by objects that are no longer real, what becomes of that person? Do they wander the rest of their days alone with nothing but the vague images of their imagination to fill the void of sight in their minds? Or do they, like the rest of their world, fade away into the nothingness, become one of the unknown?
I stand in a world of darkness. A faint glow of warm, red color radiates weakly from my body, but it is swallowed up by the blackness that surrounds me like an insubstantial yet powerfully pervasive mist. Hesitantly, I take a step forward. The floor is cool and smooth, like marble, or glass, beneath my bare feet. Another step forward. The air is thin, neither hot nor cold, and I cannot feel it move as I walk, as if I were moving through a void. Only the ground is solid as my feet descend.
More steps forward. I pick up my pace. I feel like I need to get somewhere, though the concept of “somewhere” is hazy to me. What makes up “somewhere”? A place with light, objects? But perhaps there are objects here. Perhaps they are merely hidden behind the illusory mist of darkness. This does not make my desperation any less legitimate.
I am nearly running. My feet plod noiselessly on the smooth floor, which seems to grow warmer as my feet lift off it quickly. The levelling of its temperature makes it feel less real the faster I run.
Then, suddenly, it isn’t real.
No cold wind rushes past me as I fall backwards. Nothing surrounds me, resists me. I fall steadily through the void, no end in sight, nothing accelerating me to give me hope that I will eventually have something to land on. Presently, I question if I even am falling. Perhaps I just cannot feel the floor beneath me, and I am just imagining the fall. With nothing around me that I can see, I have no reference with which I can detect my movement or lack thereof.
No cold wind rushes past me as I fall backwards. Nothing surrounds me, resists me. I fall steadily through the void, no end in sight, nothing accelerating me to give me hope that I will eventually have something to land on. Presently, I question if I even am falling. Perhaps I just cannot feel the floor beneath me, and I am just imagining the fall. With nothing around me that I can see, I have no reference with which I can detect my movement or lack thereof.
A desperation rises suddenly in the pit of my stomach in the form of a scream.
When will it end? When will I be free? I can’t live: the only material thing in an infinite expanse of insubstantiality. I belong in a world where color and shapes form reality because I myself am real. Right?
I can see the color that was radiating from my body before beginning to lift like wisps of smoke from a snuffed-out candle. The blackness devours them ravenously, and soon, nothing is left. I touch my side but there is nothing there. I try to lift my hand to my face, but there is no longer a hand to lift. I have faded away into part of the nothingness that surrounds me.
There is no throat for my scream to pass through. But somehow it does, and suddenly this entire world falls away around me into a new one.
I gasp, breathing in the cool air, and I shift, basking in the soft yet solid feel of my bed beneath me. I hear the slight rushing of cars in the city outside the apartment I live in with my mom--real life. But when I open my eyes, the new world that greets me is not that different from the one I just left.
There is nothing but blackness everywhere I turn. A mask of nothingness over my eyes.
In the first few weeks after the crash, my dreams were not like this. They were nightmares, yes, nightmares of being slammed against a window, of my head being cracked open, a spirit leaving my body and watching me lie unconscious as I was rushed to a hospital. I imagined my brain spilling out of my head, doctors looking everywhere for it, but when they could not find it, they just stitched my head back together empty. Even when the dreams departed from the truth, they were still grounded in reality. I was still surrounded by objects, color. A smashed car, crimson blood.
Now, however, I dream in the void I live in.
I grope for the lamp beside my bed, a remnant of my needs in life before the crash, and switch it on in a vain hope that it will cut through my eyes, open them up to see the definition in the forms around me. But when I look up, I see only a slight trace of yellow, studded here and there with blurry dots of white, all washed through with black. Subconsciously, I scratch at my face wishing I could tear off the invisible mask over my eyes. But I cannot fight that which does not exist. I can only suffer its effects.
“Retinal detachment.” That’s what they had called it. It often comes with head injuries, but a surgery could fix it.
I swallow down a bitter laugh as I turn the lamp back off. The light would not allay my blindness any more than that surgery had.
Gingerly, I climb down from my bed, grab my cane, and make my way to the door, probing the ground in front of me before stepping forward. Still a little jittery from my dream, I keep expecting the cool wooden floor to give way beneath my feet, but finally I emerge into the hallway.
Artificial orange from lights I cannot identify glow faintly around me. It must be evening, otherwise the light would be the whiter shade of the sun.
I hear some rustling near the front of my house and make my way over there.
“Hey, Chris.” It is my mother’s voice, smooth and cheerful, the sort of voice that easily travels through the air. She calls me by my nickname, short for Christine. “You’re up late today! It’s nearly eight.” I hear the soft sounds of her adjusting a jacket over her shoulders.
“Couldn’t sleep last night.” There is no line between night and day for me anymore; they both look the same, just darkness. I find it difficult to sleep sometimes, my brain tricking itself into thinking night is day. I spent some time tossing, until memories elicited from the attempt to clear my mind of them began to take over me, memories of pain and near death. In the end, I gave up on sleep entirely, listening to a boring but comforting audiobook until I fell asleep in what must have been late morning.
“How are you feeling?” my mom asks me. I can tell she is trying to conceal the edge of concern in her voice.
I shrug, taking more notice of the casual gesture than I would have had if I had had vision to distract me from my sense of feeling. “I’m ok,” I lie. What else do I say? How could she understand the emptiness I feel inside me that was once filled with vision?
I am more keenly aware of the hesitation in her pause. “If you ever want to talk…”
“I’m fine.”
There is contemplation in the silence that follows.
“Chrissy, I know you lost your sight, but that doesn’t mean you lost everything. There is still joy for you in the world.”
Slightly angry, I remain quiet. She couldn’t understand. Vision was everything to me. My whole world revolved around it. When I lost it, there was nothing left of my life.
I hear her sigh quietly. “I wish I could spend more time with you now, but a client wanted to meet with me. Perhaps I’ll see you later tonight, or in the morning.”
I give a tight, noncommittal nod and hear her turn. But then she says something back to me.
“You know, you used to go up to the roof so often. Why don’t you do that? It might make you feel better.”
When I don’t respond, she sighs again and leaves. I hear the door close.
I can’t go up to the roof. I would be surrounded by the noises of my city, the city that betrayed me, that allowed the accident. I would be surrounded by the honks of cars, the cacophony I heard the very last moment I had vision.
And yet, I find myself opening the door to the balcony and the bottom of the stairs. There is a strange feeling in my heart, one that makes it speed up, that pushes it forward. Memories permeate warmly throughout my mind and body, of a time when I would sit on the roof, watching the vibrant streaks of colorful car lights pop out from the dark road, the lights of buildings surrounding me, the white stars sparkling down on Earth.
My stick feels out only one more step above me. I hesitate as I squint at where I feel the stair, hoping in vain to see something. What if I mar what memory I have of the roof and city below with the blankness I now perceive?
But my heart is beating too fast for me to turn back now unfulfilled. I take the last step up.
I remember painting up here, the cool fresh night air caressing my face. I would set up an easel and paint the city, the beauty and vivacity of everything surrounding me. It was only then, only when I painted, that I truly felt I lived. I felt like a bird purveying the city, exhilaratingly free, reflecting the scene below me onto a canvas on my wings and letting it catch the wind.
Now, there is nothing but blackness.
But before I can allow my heart to fall, I realize this isn’t true.
I shut my eyes and breathe in the cool air, feel it fondle my hair. It smells slightly of rain mingling with a metallic tincture. I listen to the sound of cars, rushing like water, shuddering for a moment when I hear a honk, but remembering all the other memories associated with the noise. Good memories, ones of painting and and listening, enveloped by nothing but sound, sweet open air, freedom.
I can feel everything I felt before, perhaps more. Life and vitality charge the air, accelerating my heart. My hands twitch, yearning for a paintbrush.
Quickly but carefully, I go down the stairs and grab my art supplies and a cup of water, then ascend the stairs again.
I sit down on the floor and lay a canvas on my lap instead of setting up an easel. I want to feel it, its rough texture, its expanse of possibilities.
My watercolors are arranged by color, and I have each one memorized. Their exact colors are a little hazy in my mind, but so are the memories of the pictures I want to paint. From the sounds surrounding me, I invoke an image of the city below, and I match the colors and shapes as best as I can. But presently, it becomes a struggle, not being able to see where all my past brushstrokes are. I turn the canvas so it stands straight up, add some water, and brush my fingers against the canvas, feeling the diluted paint run down.
I stare out at the darkness in front of me. I can only see little blobs floating around, and in the distance, white and red blurs moving straight ahead.
But that’s more than enough. I gently graze the paper with my brush. I no longer try to match my strokes to a picture in my mind. Instead, I paint the sounds of my city. I paint the scent of the air. I paint the feeling of the cool breeze on my neck. I paint the taste of life.
I lie back on the roof, close my eyes, basking in the breeze, in the vast, free expanse around me that I can sense fully without seeing it.
And soon, with my eyes still closed, I can see again. Visions float past me like watercolors, yet they aren’t colors… they’re the sound of tires on pavement, the damp taste of rain, the smell of steel and gasoline, the chatter of people shouting greetings to friends.
I’m no longer in a world of black mist and glass floors. When I step forward, the floor is concrete and tingling like the roof on which I lie. I run, but not because I want to get somewhere. This is somewhere, the only place I need to be. I run because I trust the ground; I run because I feel alive.
In a state of nebulous consciousness outside the dream, I am aware of my mother’s footsteps next to me. She picks up the canvas as she breathes in sharply, and for some time I can hear nothing.
I stir and turn my face toward her. “Mom?”
“Chris… this is beautiful.”
“You were right, what you said before.” I touch her face so I can feel her reaction.
She smiles softly. “I didn’t expect this, though. How did you…?”
I sit up, turn my face up to the sky, and breathe it in. “Not being able to see… it forced me to paint what I felt. Not just what was apparent.”
My mom is silent for a moment. “I wish you could see what you made.”
I close my eyes, shutting out what little light I can perceive. The watercolors of the city flow past me, throughout me. They enter through my ears, my nose. They wash through my skin, flow into my mouth. I have a new appreciation for it all; my perception of the vivacity around me has not diminished but has burgeoned into something new. And I know that even though I can’t see it, I will always be a part of the life that is at the core of the world.
For the first time, I realize I don’t need vision to see.
I turn to my mom, knowing, although I can’t see her, that she will be looking into my pale grey eyes. “I don’t.”
I turn around, close my eyes, and feel.
I stand in a world of darkness. A faint glow of warm, red color radiates weakly from my body, but it is swallowed up by the blackness that surrounds me like an insubstantial yet powerfully pervasive mist. Hesitantly, I take a step forward. The floor is cool and smooth, like marble, or glass, beneath my bare feet. Another step forward. The air is thin, neither hot nor cold, and I cannot feel it move as I walk, as if I were moving through a void. Only the ground is solid as my feet descend.
More steps forward. I pick up my pace. I feel like I need to get somewhere, though the concept of “somewhere” is hazy to me. What makes up “somewhere”? A place with light, objects? But perhaps there are objects here. Perhaps they are merely hidden behind the illusory mist of darkness. This does not make my desperation any less legitimate.
I am nearly running. My feet plod noiselessly on the smooth floor, which seems to grow warmer as my feet lift off it quickly. The levelling of its temperature makes it feel less real the faster I run.
Then, suddenly, it isn’t real.
No cold wind rushes past me as I fall backwards. Nothing surrounds me, resists me. I fall steadily through the void, no end in sight, nothing accelerating me to give me hope that I will eventually have something to land on. Presently, I question if I even am falling. Perhaps I just cannot feel the floor beneath me, and I am just imagining the fall. With nothing around me that I can see, I have no reference with which I can detect my movement or lack thereof.
No cold wind rushes past me as I fall backwards. Nothing surrounds me, resists me. I fall steadily through the void, no end in sight, nothing accelerating me to give me hope that I will eventually have something to land on. Presently, I question if I even am falling. Perhaps I just cannot feel the floor beneath me, and I am just imagining the fall. With nothing around me that I can see, I have no reference with which I can detect my movement or lack thereof.
A desperation rises suddenly in the pit of my stomach in the form of a scream.
When will it end? When will I be free? I can’t live: the only material thing in an infinite expanse of insubstantiality. I belong in a world where color and shapes form reality because I myself am real. Right?
I can see the color that was radiating from my body before beginning to lift like wisps of smoke from a snuffed-out candle. The blackness devours them ravenously, and soon, nothing is left. I touch my side but there is nothing there. I try to lift my hand to my face, but there is no longer a hand to lift. I have faded away into part of the nothingness that surrounds me.
There is no throat for my scream to pass through. But somehow it does, and suddenly this entire world falls away around me into a new one.
I gasp, breathing in the cool air, and I shift, basking in the soft yet solid feel of my bed beneath me. I hear the slight rushing of cars in the city outside the apartment I live in with my mom--real life. But when I open my eyes, the new world that greets me is not that different from the one I just left.
There is nothing but blackness everywhere I turn. A mask of nothingness over my eyes.
In the first few weeks after the crash, my dreams were not like this. They were nightmares, yes, nightmares of being slammed against a window, of my head being cracked open, a spirit leaving my body and watching me lie unconscious as I was rushed to a hospital. I imagined my brain spilling out of my head, doctors looking everywhere for it, but when they could not find it, they just stitched my head back together empty. Even when the dreams departed from the truth, they were still grounded in reality. I was still surrounded by objects, color. A smashed car, crimson blood.
Now, however, I dream in the void I live in.
I grope for the lamp beside my bed, a remnant of my needs in life before the crash, and switch it on in a vain hope that it will cut through my eyes, open them up to see the definition in the forms around me. But when I look up, I see only a slight trace of yellow, studded here and there with blurry dots of white, all washed through with black. Subconsciously, I scratch at my face wishing I could tear off the invisible mask over my eyes. But I cannot fight that which does not exist. I can only suffer its effects.
“Retinal detachment.” That’s what they had called it. It often comes with head injuries, but a surgery could fix it.
I swallow down a bitter laugh as I turn the lamp back off. The light would not allay my blindness any more than that surgery had.
Gingerly, I climb down from my bed, grab my cane, and make my way to the door, probing the ground in front of me before stepping forward. Still a little jittery from my dream, I keep expecting the cool wooden floor to give way beneath my feet, but finally I emerge into the hallway.
Artificial orange from lights I cannot identify glow faintly around me. It must be evening, otherwise the light would be the whiter shade of the sun.
I hear some rustling near the front of my house and make my way over there.
“Hey, Chris.” It is my mother’s voice, smooth and cheerful, the sort of voice that easily travels through the air. She calls me by my nickname, short for Christine. “You’re up late today! It’s nearly eight.” I hear the soft sounds of her adjusting a jacket over her shoulders.
“Couldn’t sleep last night.” There is no line between night and day for me anymore; they both look the same, just darkness. I find it difficult to sleep sometimes, my brain tricking itself into thinking night is day. I spent some time tossing, until memories elicited from the attempt to clear my mind of them began to take over me, memories of pain and near death. In the end, I gave up on sleep entirely, listening to a boring but comforting audiobook until I fell asleep in what must have been late morning.
“How are you feeling?” my mom asks me. I can tell she is trying to conceal the edge of concern in her voice.
I shrug, taking more notice of the casual gesture than I would have had if I had had vision to distract me from my sense of feeling. “I’m ok,” I lie. What else do I say? How could she understand the emptiness I feel inside me that was once filled with vision?
I am more keenly aware of the hesitation in her pause. “If you ever want to talk…”
“I’m fine.”
There is contemplation in the silence that follows.
“Chrissy, I know you lost your sight, but that doesn’t mean you lost everything. There is still joy for you in the world.”
Slightly angry, I remain quiet. She couldn’t understand. Vision was everything to me. My whole world revolved around it. When I lost it, there was nothing left of my life.
I hear her sigh quietly. “I wish I could spend more time with you now, but a client wanted to meet with me. Perhaps I’ll see you later tonight, or in the morning.”
I give a tight, noncommittal nod and hear her turn. But then she says something back to me.
“You know, you used to go up to the roof so often. Why don’t you do that? It might make you feel better.”
When I don’t respond, she sighs again and leaves. I hear the door close.
I can’t go up to the roof. I would be surrounded by the noises of my city, the city that betrayed me, that allowed the accident. I would be surrounded by the honks of cars, the cacophony I heard the very last moment I had vision.
And yet, I find myself opening the door to the balcony and the bottom of the stairs. There is a strange feeling in my heart, one that makes it speed up, that pushes it forward. Memories permeate warmly throughout my mind and body, of a time when I would sit on the roof, watching the vibrant streaks of colorful car lights pop out from the dark road, the lights of buildings surrounding me, the white stars sparkling down on Earth.
My stick feels out only one more step above me. I hesitate as I squint at where I feel the stair, hoping in vain to see something. What if I mar what memory I have of the roof and city below with the blankness I now perceive?
But my heart is beating too fast for me to turn back now unfulfilled. I take the last step up.
I remember painting up here, the cool fresh night air caressing my face. I would set up an easel and paint the city, the beauty and vivacity of everything surrounding me. It was only then, only when I painted, that I truly felt I lived. I felt like a bird purveying the city, exhilaratingly free, reflecting the scene below me onto a canvas on my wings and letting it catch the wind.
Now, there is nothing but blackness.
But before I can allow my heart to fall, I realize this isn’t true.
I shut my eyes and breathe in the cool air, feel it fondle my hair. It smells slightly of rain mingling with a metallic tincture. I listen to the sound of cars, rushing like water, shuddering for a moment when I hear a honk, but remembering all the other memories associated with the noise. Good memories, ones of painting and and listening, enveloped by nothing but sound, sweet open air, freedom.
I can feel everything I felt before, perhaps more. Life and vitality charge the air, accelerating my heart. My hands twitch, yearning for a paintbrush.
Quickly but carefully, I go down the stairs and grab my art supplies and a cup of water, then ascend the stairs again.
I sit down on the floor and lay a canvas on my lap instead of setting up an easel. I want to feel it, its rough texture, its expanse of possibilities.
My watercolors are arranged by color, and I have each one memorized. Their exact colors are a little hazy in my mind, but so are the memories of the pictures I want to paint. From the sounds surrounding me, I invoke an image of the city below, and I match the colors and shapes as best as I can. But presently, it becomes a struggle, not being able to see where all my past brushstrokes are. I turn the canvas so it stands straight up, add some water, and brush my fingers against the canvas, feeling the diluted paint run down.
I stare out at the darkness in front of me. I can only see little blobs floating around, and in the distance, white and red blurs moving straight ahead.
But that’s more than enough. I gently graze the paper with my brush. I no longer try to match my strokes to a picture in my mind. Instead, I paint the sounds of my city. I paint the scent of the air. I paint the feeling of the cool breeze on my neck. I paint the taste of life.
I lie back on the roof, close my eyes, basking in the breeze, in the vast, free expanse around me that I can sense fully without seeing it.
And soon, with my eyes still closed, I can see again. Visions float past me like watercolors, yet they aren’t colors… they’re the sound of tires on pavement, the damp taste of rain, the smell of steel and gasoline, the chatter of people shouting greetings to friends.
I’m no longer in a world of black mist and glass floors. When I step forward, the floor is concrete and tingling like the roof on which I lie. I run, but not because I want to get somewhere. This is somewhere, the only place I need to be. I run because I trust the ground; I run because I feel alive.
In a state of nebulous consciousness outside the dream, I am aware of my mother’s footsteps next to me. She picks up the canvas as she breathes in sharply, and for some time I can hear nothing.
I stir and turn my face toward her. “Mom?”
“Chris… this is beautiful.”
“You were right, what you said before.” I touch her face so I can feel her reaction.
She smiles softly. “I didn’t expect this, though. How did you…?”
I sit up, turn my face up to the sky, and breathe it in. “Not being able to see… it forced me to paint what I felt. Not just what was apparent.”
My mom is silent for a moment. “I wish you could see what you made.”
I close my eyes, shutting out what little light I can perceive. The watercolors of the city flow past me, throughout me. They enter through my ears, my nose. They wash through my skin, flow into my mouth. I have a new appreciation for it all; my perception of the vivacity around me has not diminished but has burgeoned into something new. And I know that even though I can’t see it, I will always be a part of the life that is at the core of the world.
For the first time, I realize I don’t need vision to see.
I turn to my mom, knowing, although I can’t see her, that she will be looking into my pale grey eyes. “I don’t.”
I turn around, close my eyes, and feel.
art by Lindsey Yi | Cracked, digital