I Was Blind But Now I Can See

I feel like I’m losing my mind. This time it’s not in an “I’m having a nervous breakdown, please rush me to my therapist,” kind of way, it’s more like my brain has been removed and all that’s left in my skull is a party of lunatics. I’d like to blame it on the fact that I’m five months pregnant, I’ve heard that “prego brain,” is a thing, but the truth is that transitions tend to short-circuit my brain, too, so I don’t know exactly what’s causing stuff to happen upstairs. What I do know is that my husband thinks it’s hilarious.

For a week my vision got so blurry I couldn’t see at all. I first noticed it while trying to read the time on my microwave from a foot away and couldn’t make out the numbers. This made me nervous so I immediately Googled sudden loss of vision and Google was like, “say your goodbyes because you’re going to die.” I texted my husband and he was like, “Are you sure you’re not putting contacts on top of other contacts again?” Because that happened once. And I wrote back, “NO! THAT WOULD BE RIDICULOUS!” Panicked, I called my OBGYN and was like, “I CAN’T SEE! HEEEEELP!” And she very calmly explained that it’s very common in pregnancy for your vision to get temporarily much worse. “Your normal vision will come back after the baby is born.” Seriously? What is the baby DOING IN THERE that is causing me to lose my mind, go blind, dry heave 2,000 times per day, and pee every 2.3 seconds? Honestly, I read a lot about things that have nothing to do with me and I had no idea what pregnancy was really like until after I got pregnant. This isn’t something that women talk about enough and we should because if people are going to get pregnant all willy nilly they have a right to know what they’re getting into I.E. BLINDNESS. Also, I have not been able to spell or use the correct version of they’re, their, there, for weeks. This is a problem because I write for a living (I am just as shocked as you are that people pay me a livable wage to do this, trust me. Yes, I agree, my grammar should be much better.).

For days I walked around unable to see, confused and nervous to drive. How would I get to work? Could I work from bed for the next 4 months? How long does it take for your muscles to atrophy? What if I went all the way blind and couldn’t work at all? How hard is it to learn braille? Then one morning, my husband and I were walking our asshole poodle (whom we love) around the neighborhood and I was complaining about not being able to see where we were going and I looked into my husband’s pretty brown eyes and saw that little line that is the edge of a contact and thought, out loud, “Wait, have I been putting in your contacts this entire time?” Because I’m WAY more blind than he is and that would explain why my contacts weren’t making me see better. He stopped dead in his tracks, “Dude, I bet that’s exactly what it is. You are a hot mess right now, babe. Like seriously.” When we got home, I checked and sure enough, I’d been using his contacts the entire week. Sigh. But in my defense, we both use Hubble, the boxes are identical, and uhm, shit happens (right?).

Now my husband won’t stop making fun of me. Send a new husband.