Life without colour

As I continue to adjust to my reality without sight I have been reflecting over the past few days over what I miss the most. As stated previously I didn’t have a lot of useful sight before my accident and what I had was only in one eye (the one I bashed on the cupboard door!) however I was able to make out certain things, shapes, outlines, glimpses and so on.

I’ve already blogged about how my new situation won’t really affect the way I access information as I’ve been doing this via computers and other electronic means for years. yes there is the obvious impact it is having on my ability to get around independently particularly in unfamiliar settings. yes there is all that as well as other stuff like now knowing when the lights are on in a room, disturbed sleep patterns and the visual hallucinations which I’m still getting although not as regularly.

What then do I miss the most?

Well it’s dawned on me that what I miss the most is colour. yes it’s true that before the accident I could only make out bold colours and was no good with subtle pastel shades or the difference between a navy blue and a black for instance however I could nonetheless tell if something was red, green, yellow etc etc.

Why does this matter?

Well I’ve not really thought about this aspect of going totally blind before but it has hit me in the past few days that the absence of all colour in my life is at best tedious and at best quite depressing. No longer can i see the vibrant colour of my oldest daughter’s auburn hair and the different shades of hair of my other children. No longer can I see the colour of the clothes I am wearing or would like to wear or that of those worn by others. No longer can i tell the colour of our car from that of the others around me. No longer can i see if it’s a sunny day versus an overcast day although yes I can feel the warmth of the sun on me. No longer will I be able to look out the window on a snowy day and see the blanket of white. No longer will I be able to see the contrast between grass and the path in a park or even a glimpse of bright lights or fireworks in dark winter skies.

I could go on but hopefully you get the message. yes i have my mental images of ow things were but even now they are starting to fade. yes I have weird sensations of bright light and darkness even though this is totally unrelated to external stimulus and I think is part of the visual hallucinations. Yes I have found myself paying much more attention to the sounds of things around me to formulate a picture of what’s around me. yes I can get people to describe things to me as happened on some occasions before.

This is all true. I’m sure I will get used to it and find other ways to engage my imagination but that doesn’t take away from the fact that my world is now one not even of black and white but black and black. I know what I had before wasn’t a lot but it really is true that you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone and boy am I missing it at the moment.