![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mmerriamI found myself staring at new shelf in the garage, not really seeing it. On some levels this is not a surprise, given my condition, but…
Beloved Spouse pointed out the addition to our garage to me, and all I could do was stare at the space for several minutes, trying to process the change. I could see the new shelves and all the stuff on the new shelves and all the stuff that no longer rested on the garage floor, but it was wasn't really real.
Okay, here's the thing for any of you who are new around here: I'm blind.
Yeah, I still have some fairly good forward vision. Yes, I present so well that it is easy to forget that I'm blind, but I am legally blind. I have 7 degrees of peripheral vision. A normal person should have 140 to 180 degrees of peripheral vision. To get a sense of what my world is like, do this: make a soft fist, leaving a space about the size of a quarter in each fist that you can look through. Now look through that as if you were looking through quarter-sized binoculars.
This is what I see, give or take a little.
So what happens is that my brain tries to fill in the dead space. It remembers the things I have seen in that space on a regular basis and supplies them, sending a picture to my brain, as if I could see the spaces where I actually can't see. But the thing is, I actually can't see that space. This is why I get surprised when I look over to find someone in a space where my brain thinks they shouldn't be. This is why moving furniture is hard on Michael. This why I don't leave large totes, bags, or luggage in the floor: not only because I can't freaking see it, but my brain will lie to me like a lying thing that tells lies like a liar, and assure me there is nothing there. My brain once swore up and down that there was a squirrel climbing the wall inside a coffee shop I sometimes frequent. Why? Because there was a squirrel climbing a tree painted on the wall, and I see squirrels in my yard all the time climbing trees, so...
In the case of the garage, my brain kept trying to tell me that everything was the same as I was use seeing it. That the shop vac was here, and the firewood piled haphazardly on the floor in the corner, and various odds and ends were stacked in milk crates, and the tent pavilion was in the middle of the garage floor, and…
My brain was convinced that the garage looked just like it has for weeks. My eyes could see the cleaner, neater garage, but my brain refused to register the change, and in fact fought to superimpose how it thought I should perceive the garage according to what it remembered over how the garage really looked.
Brains. I'm just saying.
This is what I live with. Every day. Just thought I'd share.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Originally posted at michaelmerriam.net. You can comment here or there.
Beloved Spouse pointed out the addition to our garage to me, and all I could do was stare at the space for several minutes, trying to process the change. I could see the new shelves and all the stuff on the new shelves and all the stuff that no longer rested on the garage floor, but it was wasn't really real.
Okay, here's the thing for any of you who are new around here: I'm blind.
Yeah, I still have some fairly good forward vision. Yes, I present so well that it is easy to forget that I'm blind, but I am legally blind. I have 7 degrees of peripheral vision. A normal person should have 140 to 180 degrees of peripheral vision. To get a sense of what my world is like, do this: make a soft fist, leaving a space about the size of a quarter in each fist that you can look through. Now look through that as if you were looking through quarter-sized binoculars.
This is what I see, give or take a little.
So what happens is that my brain tries to fill in the dead space. It remembers the things I have seen in that space on a regular basis and supplies them, sending a picture to my brain, as if I could see the spaces where I actually can't see. But the thing is, I actually can't see that space. This is why I get surprised when I look over to find someone in a space where my brain thinks they shouldn't be. This is why moving furniture is hard on Michael. This why I don't leave large totes, bags, or luggage in the floor: not only because I can't freaking see it, but my brain will lie to me like a lying thing that tells lies like a liar, and assure me there is nothing there. My brain once swore up and down that there was a squirrel climbing the wall inside a coffee shop I sometimes frequent. Why? Because there was a squirrel climbing a tree painted on the wall, and I see squirrels in my yard all the time climbing trees, so...
In the case of the garage, my brain kept trying to tell me that everything was the same as I was use seeing it. That the shop vac was here, and the firewood piled haphazardly on the floor in the corner, and various odds and ends were stacked in milk crates, and the tent pavilion was in the middle of the garage floor, and…
My brain was convinced that the garage looked just like it has for weeks. My eyes could see the cleaner, neater garage, but my brain refused to register the change, and in fact fought to superimpose how it thought I should perceive the garage according to what it remembered over how the garage really looked.
Brains. I'm just saying.
This is what I live with. Every day. Just thought I'd share.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Originally posted at michaelmerriam.net. You can comment here or there.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2013-10-22 01:58 am (UTC)Does your mind eventually fill in the correct information for the missing peripheral information? Can you ever see your cleaned garage?
no subject
Date: 2013-10-22 02:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-22 02:45 pm (UTC)...maybe when the brain registers the cleaned up garage it will be like a great big present?
no subject
Date: 2013-10-22 08:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-23 06:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-23 07:17 pm (UTC)Good to comment back and forth with you. I hope you are doing well.