I walked down the street hesitantly, holding Sophie’s harness leash tightly. She led me confidently with her head high, sticking to my side and nudging me around obstacles.
I could almost feel everyone’s eyes on me. I was different, and I knew I was, but even then the attitude people put towards me was sometimes unbearable. They pitied me. They thought I was ‘special’ simply because my guide dog and my sunglasses I wore even inside labeled me so.
It had started as a little black creature crouching in my peripheral vision, only striking when I focused on it. Then it grew, casting its shadow across my eyes until it consumed my visual world. Blindness fell upon me like a knife, stabbing through me and, in the confusion, I lost myself. I felt myself falling up, not closer to the ground but father away. Earth was no long the familiar planet it had been for so long- the hand closed around my throat, and in such I lost all memory of ever functioning a normal life.
But being blind wasn’t that bad. I would survive.