I absolutely cannot believe that I graduated from high school 20 years ago. No matter how much I try to wrap my mind around it, it's hard for me to understand how 20 years stand between the ending of my senior year in high school and where I am today. But it's true... I'm 37-years-old. And so much about me and so much around me has changed since then.
Do I wish I could go back to high school? Absolutely not!!!!!!! That was perhaps the second most difficult period of my life. **I'm currently living in the most difficult. But that's an entirely different post for another time.**
The day I graduated from high school, I sat on the first row of our auditorium and spilled salty tears on my rouge brushed cheeks. I cried because I was so thankful that I was finally getting ready to leave the Texas School for the Blind. I cried because I was so grateful that I was getting the opportunity to begin the life that I wanted to live. I cried because I was so glad to put an emotional partition between my past and future. I cried because I couldn't believe I had actually made it to that point.
My senior year in high school was extremely difficult. A month before school was scheduled to start, my Glaucoma took a turn for the worst. My pressures sky rocketed and stole the little sight I had left. The doctors scrambled, trying to do whatever they could to try to save my sight, but their best efforts failed. I spent the first few months of my senior year, recovering from surgeries and trying to adjust to the darkness that seemed to be smuthering me in more ways than one.
Finally, my mother came to me and insisted that I return to school to finish my senior year. I protested. I wanted to either get a GED or stay in Houston with my parents and attend my local school. My mother refused to go along with my plan. She basically forced me back to Austin so that I could finish what she forced me to do four years before.
When I returned back to TSB, I felt like an orphan. I felt all alone. I felt betrayed. I felt lost. I felt resentful. I felt totally and utterly depressed.
I didn't want anyone to talk to me. I didn't want to do anything fun. And I didn't want to even live.
So, I distanced myself from the few friends I had. I sat in class quietly, avoiding conversation with my teachers. I would come home from school, take a double dose of over the counter cold medicine, and sleep until everyone else was sleep. Then, I would get up and sit in the solitude of the night until the sun revealed itself to me. Seeing the sun was my only hope, being that the rays of the sun was so bright that I could actually perceive its glory.
**I'll post the second half of this tomorrow.**
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