B
Two weeks before my 12th birthday, my teacher asked me to conduct an experiment. When I mixed some powder together, they exploded. Molten liquid hit me in the face, but I felt no pain.
I vividly remember standing there in a state of calm. I thought I was in a dream, but however hard I struggled to swim to the surface of consciousness, I couldn't wake up. I didn't understand how terrifying it was until I heard people saying, ＂Who's that?＂ That's when I knew I was unrecognizable.
I was taken to hospital, but the doctors didn't know what to do with me. Later I was flown to Houston for surgery. Between the ages of 13 and 16, I had 40 operations. As each operation came and went, my vision would come back, then fade again. Eventually, it faded completely and I had what was left of my eyes removed for cosmetic reasons.
Since then, I have lived in total darkness. Most blind people, even if they don't have any sight they're aware of, are still able to sense light. That gives them a sense of day and night. But not me. I absolutely lost that sense of time passing.
For many years, I felt my sight loss darkening my life like the loss of my parents from which I would never recover. But when I was in my 40s, I realized I had to find a way to live. I trained to become a counselor, and that has helped me see my experiences in a different way. I can't fix people's broken lives — just like I can't fix my sight — but I can help them find a way to manage.
Sometimes it feels as if all the struggles and negative experiences I've lived through were in fact a kind of preparation for helping others to make their own way towards the light.
