Before you read any further, I should tell you what this article isn't. It isn't filled with medical advice, statistics, or explanations. There are already plenty of places to find those. This is something much simpler and, for me, much harder to write. It's the story of how my world gradually transformed into something soft, distorted, and uncertain, and what it has been like trying to build an ordinary life while looking through what feels like an invisible pane of vintage wavy glass.
There are some mornings when I lie in bed for a few extra minutes, not because I am tired, but because I know exactly what will happen the moment I open my eyes. The bedroom is already filled with soft morning light, but everything beyond arm's reach feels as though it belongs to another world. The curtains glow, the outlines of furniture dissolve into one another, and the trees outside my window become nothing more than gentle patches of green moving in the wind. It reminds me of looking through an old piece of handmade glass, the kind you find in antique cottages or forgotten churches. The surface isn't smooth. It bends the light into ripples and soft waves, making everything on the other side shimmer and dance. It is beautiful when you visit an old building on vacation. It is far less beautiful when that window follows you everywhere you go.
People often ask me what my vision is like, and I never know how to answer without feeling as though I am simplifying something that has quietly shaped every part of my life. Saying that things are blurry doesn't come close to explaining it. Blur is something everyone has experienced for a few moments after taking off a pair of glasses or waking up from a nap. What I see feels different. It is as though the world has been painted onto uneven glass. Light bends where it shouldn't. Straight lines hesitate. Faces refuse to settle into focus. Every glance feels like trying to remember a dream that slips away the harder you chase it. There are moments when I know exactly what I am looking at, yet I still feel uncertain because my eyes and my brain cannot quite agree on what they are seeing.
Five years have passed since my life quietly divided itself into two chapters. There is the life before, when seeing was something I never thought about, and there is the life after, where every single day begins with the same small ritual. Before I make coffee, before I check my phone, before I decide what I want to wear, I reach for my contact lenses. They are the first thing I look for every morning because they are the closest thing I have to opening a window. It still amazes me how something so small can decide whether the world feels welcoming or distant. Putting them in has become as ordinary as brushing my teeth, yet there are mornings when I pause for just a second and remember that there was once a version of me who never had to think about any of this.
The strange thing about losing something slowly is that grief never arrives all at once. It sneaks into ordinary moments. It appears when someone points excitedly toward something across the street and I pretend I noticed it immediately. It arrives when I smile at someone because I think they are waving at me, only to realize they were greeting the person standing behind me. It appears in movie theaters when I wonder if everyone else is seeing details that I cannot, or during evening walks when streetlights bloom into glowing halos that seem to float through the darkness. None of these moments are dramatic enough to become stories that people tell. They are simply tiny disappointments that gather quietly over the years until they become part of your everyday life.
Sometimes I think the hardest part is not what I cannot see, but what I can no longer trust. Most people wake up every morning believing their eyes without even realizing they are making that choice. They glance across a room, recognize a face, read a sign, or admire the clouds without questioning whether what they are seeing is accurate. I cannot remember the last time I experienced that kind of effortless certainty. Every unfamiliar place asks a little more of me. Every crowded room requires more concentration than anyone realizes. My eyes are constantly negotiating with the world, trying to fill in missing details and smooth over imperfections. It is exhausting work, and because it happens silently, almost nobody notices it.
I have become surprisingly skilled at pretending everything is fine. I laugh when everyone else laughs. I nod as though I saw exactly what someone was pointing toward. I recognize people by the sound of their voice before I recognize their face. I have learned to memorize spaces rather than simply observe them. I know where the furniture is because I remember yesterday, not necessarily because I can see it clearly today. Memory has quietly become another sense, guiding me through familiar places with a confidence my eyes sometimes cannot provide. There are moments when I stop and wonder how much of my daily life is built upon remembering instead of seeing, and the thought is both comforting and unsettling at the same time.
There is something strangely romantic about old glass. Whenever I visit historic buildings, I find myself standing in front of those weathered windows, watching the world ripple behind them. Sunlight stretches into soft ribbons, gardens seem to sway even when the air is perfectly still, and every color melts gently into the next. Visitors admire the craftsmanship. They take photographs because the effect is charming and nostalgic. I always smile when I hear someone call it beautiful because I understand exactly what they mean. It is beautiful for a few minutes. It is beautiful when you know you can step away from it whenever you choose. Living behind that same glass every hour of every day is an entirely different experience.
There are evenings when I remove my contacts and sit quietly for a while before going to bed. The room slowly dissolves around me. Sharp edges soften into watercolor. The books on my shelf lose their titles. The photographs on the wall become little more than patches of light and shadow. I know exactly what every object is because I have lived with them for years, yet I cannot truly see them anymore. It feels as though the world is gently drifting away while I remain perfectly still. I think those quiet moments are when I feel the weight of everything the most. During the day I am busy adapting, compensating, and moving forward. At night there is nothing left to distract me from the simple truth that this is how I experience the world.
People often search for inspiring lessons whenever someone shares a difficult story. They want to believe every hardship reveals a hidden gift or transforms you into a wiser person. I understand why. It makes life feel fair. But I have never been comfortable forcing beauty onto something simply because it hurts. Living this way has made me more patient in some ways and perhaps more observant in others, but if someone asked whether I would choose this life, my answer would still be no. There is no secret gratitude hiding beneath my frustration. There is no moment when I wake up thankful for the challenges. There is only acceptance, and acceptance is very different from enjoyment. Acceptance simply means I have stopped arguing with reality because reality has already made its decision.
That does not mean life has become empty. Far from it. I still fall in love with rainy afternoons, with the smell of coffee filling the kitchen, with songs that somehow understand feelings I have never managed to describe aloud. I still find comfort in the voices of people I love and warmth in their embraces. I still stop to watch sunsets, even if they never appear quite the way I imagine they do for everyone else. Beauty has not disappeared from my life. It has simply become more complicated. Every beautiful moment now carries a quiet awareness of what I cannot fully experience, and every difficult moment is softened by the reminder that there is still something worth noticing, even through imperfect eyes.
If someone offered me one ordinary morning with perfectly clear vision, I don't think I would spend it chasing extraordinary sights. I would not climb mountains or book a flight somewhere spectacular. I would walk slowly through my own neighborhood. I would study the bark on every tree, watch individual leaves flutter in the breeze, read every street sign simply because I could, and memorize the faces of the people I love without effort. I would stand at my window with a cup of coffee and watch the sunrise through perfectly ordinary glass, the kind nobody ever notices because it does its job so well. I think that is what I miss the most. Not perfection. Just the ability to forget that seeing was ever something I had to think about.
Five years have passed, and every morning still begins the same way. I reach for my contact lenses before I reach for the day ahead because they are the closest thing I have to opening that invisible window between myself and the world. I wish I could say I have made peace with it, but that would not be true. Some days the frustration still catches me by surprise. Some days I grieve the life I imagined I would have. Yet every morning I put my lenses in, step outside, and continue living anyway. Not because I enjoy looking through wavy glass, and not because I have found some grand meaning in it, but because life, even when it is blurred and imperfect, is still waiting for me on the other side.
Audrey Belanger