a question of vision

I was dozing on the train this morning (as usual) when I felt a hand on my thigh.

Startled, I looked up and saw that the hand's owner was blind.

"Is this seat taken?"

I moved her hand to the bench on the other side of the aisle. "Yes - but the one right next to you isn't. Do you have it?"

And as I watched her safely sit down, I was reminded of many things.

I am very near-sighted - not legally blind, but with vision impaired enough that without my glasses I literally can't see beyond my nose. I started needing glasses somewhere around 1st grade, and I have strong memories of refusing to wear them, thinking I could make my eyes stronger if I forced myself to see without them; memories of waking up eager and hoping for focused vision; memories of glasses so heavy they would fall off my face if I leaned over too far.

And then there's a memory that's still far too strong and frustrating, of waking after a nap at Z's to find that he had moved my glasses to somewhere out of reach.
Panicked, I was afraid to move - the futon I had been sleeping on lay directly on the floor, so if this was simply a matter of my forgetting where I had put my glasses, I was afraid I might step on them.
So I proceeded to gently-but-frantically pat around the edges of the futon, putting my hand in his ashtray, trying not to knock things over.
When he returned to the room, I was curled up in a little ball, feeling too helpless to be as angry as I should have been.

Everything I do relies on my vision.

I remain terrified of losing it.