See What Happens

By Audrey Lingan

In these last few months, my friends and I have been coping with the inevitability that we’re all about to be shoved out of our brick-colored fantasy world into the grey monotony of 401ks, meal-planning and coworker book clubs. Senior year pushes you to confront difficult realities, and one I came to see very clearly is that I’m fucking blind. 

Maybe I should specify that I am literally blind. Although, am I also now realizing that the pressure to succeed within this university has conditioned students to plan out every waking moment of their life, creating unrealistic expectations for how the world works? Yes, but this is a different eye-opening experience. 

I, a 5’ 1” half-Filipino woman, have actively pushed off the need to get glasses for over a year. Now, I’m not fully blind, but if I’m sitting in the middle of a lecture room, you’ll think I’m Simon Cowell with the way I’m scrunching my brow to make sense of the board. Luckily, I get to use this as an excuse to sit at the front and be a star “pupil.” I’d expand on that more, but I’m too busy wiping the shit off my nose. 

Eye-ronically, for the past three and a half years, I have worked in a research lab that actively looks for potential therapeutic targets to treat the leading causes of blindness! Yet, my blindness seemed like just a minor inconvenience—you know, something to keep an eye on. To me, it was perfectly normal to take a photo of a hanging restaurant menu to read the selections—I was just capturing a memory. At some point, I just gave up and just told restaurants I’ll take #3 and hoped to god I’d like it (or that the place numbered their entrees). It was like Russian Roulette, but if you lose, you’re out $16 and spent the night hobbled over the toilet. Yet, something iris I knew earlier that ultimately spurred me to shift my view on glasses is that blindness comes off a whole lot like bitchiness. 

You know what bitches and blind people have in common? Both don’t register your existence. I cannot tell you how many times I walked by someone I knew and failed to acknowledge them. Plus, this is Vanderbilt, so I probably passed by that same person twenty times in a day. I apologize if anyone has had to be an eye-witness to this. Don’t worry, I would hate me, too. If I saw the person again, I would then give them a long-winded spiel about how I can’t see, and that is in fact why I ignore them, much like their fathers. As one would, most people respond with, “Well, why don’t you get glasses?” To that, I say, “Well, why don’t you run around campus dressed like a chicken, no? – exactly, cause you’re lazy and don’t want to look stupid.” Plus, sometimes…every once in a while…occasionally… I don’t want to talk to people, and blindness is a perfect scapegoat. 

I know it’s cornea to be against wearing glasses, but I’m scared of change. Perhaps, much like you, fellow seniors, I don’t want to be brutally ripped from the comforting womb of college into the sharpness of reality. However, living in a blurry facade is not sustainable. At some point you’ll exhaust yourself running into walls, and you’ll call your optometrist begging for a set of monthly contacts. 

Despite my virtuous humor: to my seniors, like my aforementioned vision, our futures are not very clear. For many, your post grad plans look like someone up and shoved a tub of vaseline on your phone camera. You may be comparing yourself to those motherfuckers who’s LinkedIn profiles are as well curated as a topiary bush, but just know everyone has their own blind spot. Here’s some unsolicited advice: if you ever feel like the optics of your future aren’t great, trust that some slimming tortoise shell lenses are gonna plop down on your lap, and just see what happens.